More than two hours
That was how long head coach Yeng Guiao and some of his deputies remained inside the NLEX Road Warriors’ locker room at the SMART Araneta Coliseum on Friday night, following their 86-97 loss to the Rain or Shine Elasto Painters.
“Nagka-kwentuhan lang,” quipped the veteran tactician after their post-game talk, which had already covered the entire Barangay Ginebra-Phoenix Fuel Masters match, which the latter won in convincing fashion.
For sure, it wasn’t just a simple post-game talk, as Guiao had joked. Things haven’t been good for NLEX as of late, especially now that they have absorbed their fourth straight defeat after a 2-0 start to the 2018 Philippine Cup.
“Well we just have to go back to the drawing board. The losing streak has taken too long,” said Guiao of their slump — a position that nobody had ever envisioned them to be in considering the promising start they made.
Against Rain or Shine, NLEX missed the services of bigs Rabeh Al-Hussaini and Mike Mranda. But for Guiao, the loss wasn’t due to their depleted line-up, but mainly because of the Road Warriors’ poor performance on both ends of the floor.
“I felt that we have a lot of lapses, bad decisions defensively. But what also concerning is our offense, it’s out of sync, out of rhythm,” said Guiao, as NLEX shot just 38.4 percent from the floor and turned the ball over 22 times.
Referring to their skid in general, Guiao stressed that it is caused by the way they have been taking care of the ball. In their first three losses, they got out-rebounded by an average of 11.3 caroms, and in all their defeats, they normed 17.25 TOs.
“I guess our problem has been, the last few games, giving up extra possessions,” the seven-time champion coach said.
“We have always lost rebounding and turnovers. That means, if you lose rebounding and turnovers, you lose opportunities.”
The Road Warriors (2-4) are truly in a tough spot right now — they have become the second-worst team in the league. But Guiao is still positive that they can still make a playoff push with five games left.
“We have five games left. I think in order to keep ourselves alive, we must win four out of the next five games just to keep ourselves alive, just to be able to make the next round.
“That’s a tall order but I think that’s still possible,” said Guiao.
