The most striking aspect of Converge’s big win over San Miguel on Sunday was not the victory itself, but the way the FiberXers neutralized June Mar Fajardo, the end-all, be-all of the Beermen engine, and reduced him into a spectator late in that heavyweight matchup.
Following the win, Converge head coach Aldin Ayo provided a pretty candid overview of how they planned to deal with the six-time Most Valuable Player heading into the game.
“We wanted to take June Mar away from the game right away,” Ayo said in the post-game press conference. “I told the boys [to] just play our game, make sure that we get the pace, make June Mar a liability on defense. He’s probably the best player on offense but may mga lapses din naman si June Mar. Everybody knows it. ‘Yun ang trade off, and we want to exploit that.”
Targeting Fajardo on defense is not a groundbreaking strategy by any means. As amazing as ‘The Kraken’ is, coaches have always been cognizant of the fact that Fajardo’s size and suboptimal lateral movement work against him in the pick and roll, and dragging him out of the paint and forcing him to defend in the perimeter is arguably top of mind when scheming against the Beermen.
But as obvious as his weakness sounds, exploiting it over and over again is easier said than done; great players, coaches and teams often find a way to alleviate the blow and overcome the hump, which is how Fajardo, hands down the most dominant PBA player of all time, and former head coach Leo Austria have won nine titles together in the first place.
Additionally, teams don’t always have the manpower and the consistency to press on the hurt on both ends of the floor. Some teams can make Fajardo move his feet on defense then fail to contain him in the post on the other end. It’s the inverse for others – they’re capable of making Fajardo work thrice as hard for his touches, but they don’t have the juice on offense to threaten him enough on the other end.
Enter Converge.
Say whatever you want about the way the Beermen dispatched the FiberXers in two quarterfinals games – young teams under rookie PBA coaches don’t always figure it out on the first go, anyway – but at least for one night, Ayo’s wards showed they possess both scheme savviness and the requisite personnel to limit the league’s preeminent force, making them a legitimate threat once the stakes turn up in the playoffs.
One criticism lobbed at San Miguel was their inability to feed Fajardo, who only got four field goal attempts – tied for the lowest number of shots he’s taken this season (he’s averaging 11.4 for the season). While it’s certainly not ideal, it certainly wasn’t for a lack of trying; Converge just did an excellent job denying the post entry passes by “fronting” Fajardo every chance they could get, with Justin Arana and Abu Tratter – bigs who possessed good size, length and lower body base to hold their ground against Fajardo – taking turns handling the task.
Most times, a second body inched nearby to dissuade passers from making the initial post entry:
During the very few times Converge couldn’t front the post, they sent help either from the weak side or from someone who was already loading up help nearby to “dig” and recover. Oftentimes it was one of import Jamaal Franklin or guards Maverick Ahanmisi and Alex Stockton – a pair of rangy guards with the length to bother Fajardo on doubles.
Fajardo was often forced to pass out, which then triggered swing passes to the weak side, but Converge did a good job rotating with the next man, with the help defender then peeling off of June Mar and relocating to the far corner:
Touches simply didn’t come easy. Fajardo’s first basket came off a quick post seal when he relocated to the right block after the initial post entry seal on the left side wasn’t available. Another came via brute force following a half-baked execution out of the HORNS alignment. His last came off an offensive rebound, when he attacked a defense that had yet to reorganize itself:
Converge’s plan wasn’t totally foolproof. Rotations weren’t always crisp, and SMB in some instances had the post-entry passer or someone from the nail cut to the paint in hopes that Fajardo would find them. The Beermen also utilized Fajardo as a screener instead, and it worked to varying degrees:
But if Converge’s plan was to take precious seconds off the clock and make others beat them, then they certainly succeeded for the most part. Here’s one defensive possession that kind of encapsulated the spirit of that intent – Stockton stalling Fajardo coming off a flex screen, Tratter fronting him, Ahanmisi lurking nearby to send help when needed, and Perez having to create a tough look late in the shot clock:
On offense, the FiberXers did as expected: push the pace and target Fajardo in the pick-and-roll.
Pushing the tempo wasn’t always an option; San Miguel entered Saturday as the second-best team in defending transition opportunities, holding opponents to just 0.92 points per possession, and Converge, one of the league’s most potent transition teams, managed just 0.95 PPP during that matchup as the Beermen closed those windows. But they were pretty successful in the halfcourt (1.03 PPP; league average is 0.96) as they increasingly sought to involve Fajardo on defense.
Franklin had tremendous success when Fajardo showed against ball handlers in the pick-and-roll simply by spraying a couple of tough 3s early on. Pullup jumpers from players capable of making them efficiently are viable shots against show coverage, and it’s even more so for the 31-year-old NBA veteran, who has hit a staggering 36.6% on such 3s this conference:
Converge dialed up the aggression in the second half, where they hunted Fajardo every chance they could get – both in transition, where they looked for Fajardo’s man when they could, or in the halfcourt, where they flipped screen angles and relied on dynamic ball-handlers who could rise up for a floater or a pull-up when attacking vs. show:
San Miguel actually countered by “pre-switching” to keep Fajardo from getting involved in the pick and roll. Tratter came over to drag Fajardo out of the paint, but Ross dutifully took the assignment and eventually got the switch on Franklin. The two-time Defensive Player of the Year gave Converge’s import fits once coach Jorge Gallent gave him the task in the second quarter and eventually held him to 0-of-4 shooting as the primary defender, per InStat.
Ross pre-switched again in the following possession to draw the Franklin assignment, but Fajardo, unfortunately, drew his sixth and final foul after Barkley Ebona drifted from the corner to the paint, denying the Beermen a chance to see if the ploy would work more wonders down the stretch:
Without Fajardo, Perez took the wheel and kept the Beermen swinging, managing to get downhill in three of four of his possessions over the next two minutes, including one off a Miami/Orlando action (a dribble handoff followed by a ball screen) to get a three-point play opportunity and cut the lead to one:
Converge kept it simple on the other end by dragging out Vic Manuel, who has been a defensive liability over the past couple of years, to probe for gaps. A pin screen to free up Ahanmisi for a corner 3 gave the FiberXers a four-point cushion with 1:38 left, then Franklin barreled over Manuel for a tough finish that gave them a 104-101 lead with 50.3 seconds remaining.
A ton of credit also goes to Arana, who, aside from successfully denying Fajardo a decent look all game long, came up with a pair of big blocks over the last minute and a half to keep the Beermen at bay:
There’s a chance this win ends up being a minor blip later in the conference – a footnote in the grand scheme of things for either team’s campaigns. But for teams with grand aspirations like San Miguel and Converge, there’s a lot to glean here.
The Beermen, owners of the league’s best net rating (+11.7) and defense (101.5 defensive rating) despite the loss, still possess a certain aura of dominance about them, but there’s work to be done to keep their best player from being a non-factor once the games start counting for them. The FiberXers, meanwhile, get affirmation that they’re capable of vanquishing old demons with the personnel and braintrust that they have, but they know they’ll need to play near-perfect basketball over the course of a long playoff series in order to do so.
If both these squads meet again in the playoffs, expect them to use some of the lessons they used from Saturday against each other in what should be a fun matchup.
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