Ginebra head coach Tim Cone was actually satisfied with how his wards defended Myles Powell and Bay Area despite falling short in closing the PBA Commissioner’s Cup Finals series in Game Six on Wednesday night.
The Kings faced the explosive 25-year-old guard for the first time as he reprised his role with Andrew Nicholson injured, and went on to limit him below his usual scoring average as he only amassed a conference-low 29 points.
But the thing was, as lamented by the league’s winningest mentor himself, that the crowd darlings could not deliver on the offensive end of the floor.
“Did it look like we had a hard time? I’m serious, did it look like we had a hard time? I’ll have to look at the video to see,” he told reporters moments after the narrow 87-84 defeat at the SMART Araneta Coliseum.
“We only gave up 87 points, they average like 115 when Powell is playing. So, we did what we wanted to do defensively; we just didn’t knock down shots on the offensive side,” he furthered.
Shooting has really been Ginebra’s problem in the series. Wednesday night saw the crew make just 37.5-percent from the floor, which was their second-worst shooting after converting only 34.9-percent albeit in an 89-82 Game Two win.
They seemed to have gotten rid of that issue when they shot a series-high 50.7-percent in their 101-91 Game Five win last Sunday, but the struggles recurred at a time they were aiming to wrap up the best-of-seven series.
Although they made 47.3-percent of their two-point field goals, the Barangay sank just seven of their 33 attempts from deep, and that, for Cone, proved to be the difference — the Dragons went 17-of-33 from beyond the arc,
“We had him where we wanted, but they had a great shooting night from three, almost 50-percent. We shot 20-percent. That was the difference in the game,” he said.
Despite the shooting woes, Ginebra still had an opportunity to send the game into overtime when Powell could’t ice it from the free throw line, going of course to Justin Brownlee for the three-pointer with 5.4 seconds to play.
The three-time Best Import inbounded the ball to start a set where he was supposed to regain the rock. But the defense prevented him from doing so, leaving Japeth Aguilar with no choice but to fire the triple as time expired.
His shot missed, allowing Bay Area to breathe a huge, huge sigh of relief as they kept their conference — and their championship hopes — alive.
“Out of desperation at that point,” said Cone of the final play. “We had five seconds to go. We had something designed for him, but we couldn’t get the ball to him. We didn’t get the shot we wanted.
“Five seconds to go, down by three, everybody knows you need a three-point shot. It’s basically tsamba if you get that shot. The odds aren’t very good, so I’m not worried too much about that,” the 65-year-old furthered.
Ginebra wanted to end it on Wednesday but if it’s any consolation, Game Seven has been moved on Sunday. Cone initially wanted for the original schedule to be followed but simply looked at the days as a period to regroup and recover.
“I would have preferred it to be Friday. I’m a little disappointed it’s Sunday, but it’s out of our control, so we’ll worry about it on Sunday,” he said.
“That’ll give our guys, I guess, a little more time to rest, and we’ll think what we’ll do with Powell, and like I said, it’s out of our control.”
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The second game of each PBA gameday is live-streamed on SMART Sports.
