There’s no denying on the part of Rondae Hollis-Jefferson that winning another PBA Best Import award is an achievement he’s immensely grateful for.
It’s just that the former NBA veteran is never one to go after personal glory and the like, with his sights always set on the ultimate prize wherever he plays.
“I give thanks to my teammates and coaches for helping me accomplish that. It’s something that I could talk to my kids about in the future,” he said.
“Of course, it’s an accomplishment. But at the end of the day, I’ll reiterate and I’ll say it a million more times, I’m not playing this game worried about individual accolades. I wanna win,” the 29-year-old winger continued.
RHJ won his second Governors’ Cup Best Import title in a row on Sunday in front of 16,000-plus fans at the SMART Araneta Coliseum, yet he was not in the mood to celebrate hours after receiving the Bobby Parks Plaque.
It’s because his Tropang Giga lost Game 4 by way of a 106-92 result, allowing Ginebra to tie the best-of-7 series at two games apiece after being down 0-2.
Hollis-Jefferson himself led the defending champions with 28 points and nine rebounds and actually has little to no issue specifically with the way they performed offensively, basing as much on the game’s statistics.
He particularly noted the way both teams shot the ball, with the Barangay shooting just a bit better (56.3-percent) than TNT (54.1-percent). The latter, though, shot 52.5-percent from three, over 7-percent higher than the other.
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“If you look at it from a statistical standpoint — [we shot over] 50-percent from the two; 40-plus and 50 from the three; [we were] 75-percent [while] they were 90 from the free throw line — it was a good game,” he offered.
But it was the ‘mental mistakes,’ he lamented, that made it difficult for TNT in chopping down the gap, let alone in taking control of the game.
“There were some things where we just made mental mistakes, we couldn’t cut the lead in some situations,” he said as Chot Reyes’ wards fell to a 54-42 halftime deficit and played catch-up since. “And that’s on our part.”
It didn’t help, too, that the Kings received plenty of contributions outside of Justin Brownlee, as the troika of Maverick Ahanmisi, Japeth Aguilar, and Stephen Holt finished with 18 points apiece to support their star import’s 34 points.
Ahanmisi and Holt nailed a four and a triple, respectively, inside the final 2:33, scoring the first seven points of a 9-2 run to finish the game.
“You gotta give credit to those guys, they played phenomenal,” said Hollis-Jefferson. “Japeth was 7-for-10; Ahanmisi was 6-for-9 — we’re used to getting 8, 10 [from him] and now 18, it makes it tougher on the opposing team.
“We gotta go back to the drawing board, look at some things, and make some adjustments.”
