Sol Mercado is keeping his fingers crossed as he sustained an apparent rib injury on Sunday night, in the Barangay Ginebra San Miguel’s 104-84 victory over the Magnolia Hotshots.
Mercado left the match with 5:02 left to play as he was writhing in pain while kneeling on the ground. The wide-bodied guard played a total of 22 minutes and had four points and three steals.
“Hopefully it’s just a bruise and not anything more than that,” said the 34-year-old, who is averaging 7.0 points, 2.34 rebounds, and 1.57 steals, after the match. He noted that the initial diagnosis made by the team doctors was a bruised rib.
Mercado sustained the rib injury during a play on the Hotshots side, when import Justin Jackson dunked the ball off a miss. Mercado was near the rim, and Paul Lee apparently hit him.
The Filipino-American though isn’t pointing fingers to anybody else
“I got elbowed in my rib [by] Paul. But I don’t think he did it on purpose. Just swung through,” said Mercado. “And then when it happened I had a hard time breathing, so I got scared.
“But after a while I started to feel a little better. It just hurts. It’s tender right now,” added the 10-year league veteran.
Mercado will be going through a check-up in the next days so as to determine the real case of his injury. All in the Barangay is hoping for the best, including head coach Tim Cone.
“We’ll see what’s going on. Hopefully it’s nothing major. We need him,” stressed the multi-titled bench strategist. “We need his defense, we need what he brings to our team.”
Ginebra, who’s now carrying a 3-5 card and is currently at ninth place, really needs Mercado at this point of the 2018 Commissioner’s Cup as they try to make it into the next round.
