Ginebra head coach Tim Cone felt that his team felt ‘a little satisfied’ by tying the PBA Governors’ Cup Finals against TNT to two games apiece.
And that proved to be a recipe for disaster after the crowd darlings absorbed a brutal 99-72 beatdown in the crucial Game 5 on Wednesday night, the reason why they are now staring at a 3-2 deficit in the race-to-4 series.
“They were ready, they were hungry, and we were a little satisfied after our two wins,” he said moments after the 99-97 defeat at the SMART Araneta Coliseum.
So crushed were the Kings that some fans headed out of the Big Dome still with a full quarter left to play as the Tropang Giga held a 79-48 lead after three.
Eventually, the defending champions would hand Ginebra its worst Finals loss since a 132-94 result against San Miguel Beer in Game 3 of the 2018 Commissioner’s Cup title bout, per league stats chief Fidel Mangonon III.
TNT, on the other hand, registered its most lopsided win in the Finals since a 132-105 victory over Petron in Game 3 of the 2011 Governors’ Cup.
It was, without a doubt, a humiliating loss for the Barangay, who shot a poor 32-percent from the floor, including a 7-of-29 clip from the three-point area as their problems in the first matches of the best-of-7 affair resurfaced.
“We looked overly tired tonight. Even though we had a two-day break, we looked overly tired. We weren’t moving well,” Cone opined.
Justin Brownlee himself was the microcosm of their struggles as the three-time Best Import got held to only eight points on 3-of-13 field goal shooting and 10 rebounds. He was subbed out late in the third, never to be brought back in.
That, though, is hardly the concern of Cone but rather the game’s result as a whole, for it has put the team on the brink of losing to the Tropa anew.
“It’s just pogi points. Doesn’t really matter. I mean, it doesn’t matter what he does individually, it just matters that we lost by 30 points–actually it doesn’t even matter that we lost by 30 points. Bottom line is, we lost,” he said.
Yet the league’s winningest mentor remains defiant, for they lost just one battle and not the entire war — a mentality which he surely hopes his charges would adopt as they head into Game 6 on Friday night at the Coliseum, still.
“Now, our back is to the wall, and we have to come out with a little bit of desperation in Game Six,” the 66-year-old Cone said.
“No one feels worse about losing a game like this than me but it’s the same as losing a 30-point game, losing a one-point game–it’s the same in the series. So, we just gotta move on, get ready for Game Six, and see what we can do.”
