Ginebra is holding its breath after Jamie Malonzo went down with a knee injury during their eventual loss to San Miguel in the semifinals’ Game 3, Sunday night.
The defeat ended their PBA Season 48 Commissioner’s Cup campaign.
Coach Tim Cone and the team have yet to know the extent of the injury suffered by the young winger, who was rushed to St. Luke’s for further checking.
“We have no idea. He’s in St. Luke’s right now doing an MRI,” he told reporters moments after their 94-91 defeat at the Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay.
“We’ll have more information tomorrow. But right now, we don’t have any information. It’s a knee injury but we don’t know what type of knee injury.”
Malonzo had to be helped out by his teammates on the way to the bench after appearing to have tweaked something on his left knee.
It happened at the 4:40-mark of the third quarter following his attempt to evade the defense of opposing guard CJ Perez. But play was not stopped until 20 seconds later, when he gave up a foul on Jericho Cruz.
The 27-year-old would never come back into the game. He left with 10 points on 4-of-9 shooting, three rebounds, three assists, and a block in 24 minutes.
His absence was no doubt a tough break for Ginebra, as it eventually kissed its title defense bid goodbye after a vengeful sweep at the hands of the same team it finished in three games in the 2023 Governors’ Cup semis.
Cone could only concede to the kind of depth their rivals have that caused so much problems for the crowd darlings tactics-wise.
“Big credit to Coach Jorge [Gallent] and his staff,” he said. “They came out with adjustments in each game that gave us problems.
“First game was the high-low, and the second game was the big-to-big screen. This last game was, we got up with six, they came up with a [Marcio] Lassiter and [Bennie] Boatwright Jr. screen that we couldn’t solve,” he added.
Still, the league’s only 25-time champion coach lauded the way his Kings fought against a team that’s bound for its 44th Finals appearance overall.
“We could’ve played better. I don’t think we could’ve played harder. We played hard. I really appreciate the guys’ effort out there. They laid it on the line and just came up short against a team that’s really on a roll,” he said.
“But I’m not gonna fault our guys’ effort. We played hard, we stayed in each game, we matched them and battled and battled and came up short in each game. They hit all the big shots and down the stretch we couldn’t hit shots.”
