Meralco Bolts head coach Norman Black did not hold back, and straight-up called out his misfiring locals, following his team’s 86-96 meltdown against the Barangay Ginebra San Miguel in Game Two of the 2017 Governors’ Cup Finals, Sunday night.
“My locals need to step up a little bit to support Allen [Durham] and make some shots. That’s really the problem right now,” said Black. “Ranidel [De Ocampo] is not making his threes, JD (Jared Dillinger) is not making his threes.
“We’re not getting that spacing that we need around Allen to be able to have him successful. We’ve had that the entire conference but in this series, the first two games, we haven’t been able to knock down our outside shots.”
True enough, the Bolts have yet to find their rhythm from beyond the arc in the series.
For two games, they have sank just a total of 13 triples in 57 attempts — far from the league-best 37 percent they fired early in the conference.
The Orangemen still managed to play better in Game Two, but their failure to protect a six-point lead in the game’s final six minutes proved to be costly. From being up 75-69, they were left in the dust courtesy of a backbreaking 17-1 run by the Gin Kings.
“A lot of things went wrong in the last three minutes. We were up by a couple of points and we couldn’t make our shots, we couldn’t make our foul shots,” Black rued, referring to their botched freebies (1-for-4) in the end-game.
The Bolts could also still be battling fatigue since they — and Ginebra — had little rest from the long travel they had on Friday night, as Game One was held in Lucena, Quezon, which is a four-hour drive from Manila.
But for Black, it shouldn’t be an excuse.
“We’re both dealing with the same situation. We both travelled to Lucena City and we both had to travel back right after the game. I’m a former player, I’m not gonna make excuses,” continued Black, one of the greatest imports in the PBA, “You are what you are on the basketball court. You go out there and produce and if you produce well, you win. If you don’t, you lose.
“Both teams had to deal with that type of trip so I don’t think that’s a legitimate excuse.”
The breaks of the game veered away from Meralco as well. But the 59-year-old mentor tipped his hat to the Barangay for a great job on defense.
“I thought they really did a good job of picking up their defense,” said the multi-titled mentor, who has a Grand Slam under his belt. “They put a lot of pressure on the basketball and forced us into a lot of turnovers, forced shots.”
The loss sent Meralco to a 0-2 hole in the best-of-seven clash. They can still extend the series come Game Three this coming Wednesday, but Black admitted that pressure is piling up.
“It’s tough. We know what it’s like to be down 2-0 and most of the time, the teams that were down 2-0 did not bounce back to win a championship,” said Black. “But, there are instances when teams were down 3-0 and came back and won. We saw San Miguel do it recently so it is possible.
“Until they win four games, we’ll be out there fighting.”
