Purefoods coach Ryan Gregorio probably believes in it enough to mention that his team was playing on the 3rd day of the 3rd month of the year, and 33 was coincidentally the number of Eugene Tejada, the former Purefoods forward who was paralyzed in a freak accident during a game four years ago. The players had dedicated the rest of the conference to their fallen comrade, and they won the Philippine Cup championship that year too.



Three championships for Coach Ryan. Three years of reprieve from Fire Quinito.

In his post-game address to the frenzied Araneta Coliseum crowd, James Yap dedicated the game to his late mother-in-law, former President Corazon Aquino, his number one fan who never missed any of his games before she passed away last year. During the series, his teammates joined Yap in wearing yellow armbands to dedicate the rest of the games in her honor. Over the course of the next couple of months, the whole nation will be treated to a debate about the existence or the impact of ‘Cory magic’ in the political arena. Tonight, it would seem that the magic is alive and well at the Araneta Coliseum.

I am not a faithful man; I don’t know if I believe in destiny or magic. But I know I believe in basketball, and I believe that the best team gets to lift up the trophy at the end of the tournament.

Tonight, there’s no question about it: Purefoods is the best team in the land after taking game 4 over Alaska, 86-76, to sweep the 2010 PBA Philippine Cup best-of-7 finals.

Oh, the Aces came to play tonight. At least, their main men Willie Thriller and The Boss did. Alaska may not have looked great this evening – no team that gets swept 0-4 ever does – but this is a great, well-coached team that has been excellent all conference long. It was Purefoods that made them look awful.

There was Roger Yap, the floor general who didn’t shoot well in this series, but controlled the tempo of the games. He was masterful at taking the air out of the ball to make sure that Alaska never had the opportunity to get a few easy baskets in a faster game.

There was Kerby Raymundo, the on-again, off-again superstar, the operative word being superstar. While his performance may have been up-and-down, he was still a constant matchup nightmare for Alaska; the opposing defense ALWAYS had to worry about him, as if it didn’t have enough things to worry about.

There was the sampayan brigade of Marc Pingris, Rico Maierhofer, and Rafi Reavis. Sakuragi, in particular, was an absolute joy to watch; whenever some lazy curmudgeonly asshole sportswriter and/or blogger writes about how PBA players don’t play with any passion anymore unlike the UAAP or the bygone days of fucking Crispa and fucking Toyota, please send him clips of this guy. He rebounds like he’s still playing for ice tubig in the Pangasinan summer heat. He wrestles the big guys in the paint and harasses the guards out in the perimeter, sometimes all in the same sequence. My favorite was when he’d be guarding LA Tenorio and he’d get this look in his face like, “Putangina, sige, mag-penetrate ka, papalamunin kita ng bola.” It’s a testament to Tenorio that he didn’t pee his pants, but he stayed the hell out of the paint when Pingris was on him; his only good game in the series came when he was hitting his three-pointers.

There was the firestarter duo of KG Canaleta and Peter June Simon, neither of whom were born with a conscience. Both of them may be one-dimensional, but it’s a pretty awesome dimension.

There was the rest of the bench, led by Paul Artadi, cheering and clapping and jumping and chest-bumping around, annoying the fuck out of the other team’s fans.

Finally, there was James Yap, the MVP and the face of the franchise. Everyone knows about the killer spin moves and the booming three-pointers with a hand in his face, but only true fans know about the subtle nuances in his game. How he is so patient with the offense and how he is willing to defer, even when he could take his man one-on-one every possession. How he’s murder on the passing lanes when the team is playing zone, often getting steals or tipping the ball. How much he helps out on the boards, and how he never allows any offensive rebounds despite being assigned to a bigger guy. How he’s often the voice of reason on the floor when Kerby and Roger both get too aggressive on offense. How he’s far and away the most gifted offensive player on the floor, but he’s never an asshole about it, because he knows that at the end of the game he’ll be getting that ball and burying that fucking dagger.

Of course, the coaching staff led by Ryan Gregorio put it all together. They just hit all the right buttons in this series. The game plans, the substitutions, the timeouts, the play-calling, all of these were excellent. Ryan Gregorio, much-maligned not just by me but a lot of fellow Purefoods fans, was excellent.

The result on the court was beautiful. Purefoods executed its plays, disrupted the opponent’s offense with a headhunting press, recovered on defense, crashed the offensive boards, hit dagger shots, and battered Alaska from pillar to post. The awarding of the Philippine Cup at the end of the night seemed like mere formality; Purefoods looked every bit the champion long before the final buzzer sounded.

Some would call it destiny. Some would call it magic. I would call it damn great basketball.

To the naked eye, the last two games of the ongoing PBA Philippine Cup finals series between Purefoods and Alaska have been pretty much alike. They have been low-scoring games, with Purefoods pulling out the win at the last possessions.

The scores have been low because these teams play slow; as j_myxx of Patay ang Butiki pointed out in the comments of my post about game 1, these are the two slowest teams in the league. However, adjusting the scores for pace shows that the two games were vastly different: game 2 was a wild shootout, with each team going over the 100-point efficiency mark, while game three was a defensive struggle, as Purefoods barely topping 90 points while holding Alaska to 89.

	PF PTS	ALA PTS	PF EFF EFF	ALA EFF	POSS
Game 2	86	85	102.41	101.22	83
Game 3	79	78	90.78	89.63	87

The data is even more interesting when looking at Purefoods’ last six games (all wins), dating back to its semifinals series against San Miguel. Two things stand out: Purefoods is playing at its preferred slow pace, and there’s no rhyme or reason for their wins.



They’ve been winning in hoop-burning shootouts, and they’ve been winning in ugly defensive battles. To put it more succinctly, Ryan Gregorio’s boys have been finding ways to win ballgames.

Last night was no different. With James Yap and Kerby Raymundo (well, especially Kerby Raymundo) shooting miserably from the field, bench players Peter June Simon (in the first half) and KG Canaleta (in the second half) stepped up and hit big shots. Credit really must go to Purefoods coach Ryan Gregorio for sticking with those two guys and giving them the green light to shoot, even if it means allowing Canaleta to hoist up turnaround, fadeaway three-pointers. Also, Gregorio played Simon at point guard for a stretch in the first half, allowing the struggling super-sub to have the ball in his hands to run the pick-and-roll and shoot over LA Tenorio. Rookie Rico Maierhofer had a good stretch too, slithering his way to easy baskets around the hoop.

It helps Purefoods’ cause that they have Marc Pingris and Rafi Reavis wreaking havoc on the boards. It just brings such a different dynamic to the game for a shooter to know that he can throw it up, because he has those guys hanging around the paint waiting to clean up his mess.

Alaska started out fairly strongly, matching up with Purefoods with their own big-ball lineup, as Tim Cone inserted Reynel Hugnatan to start the game in lieu of Tony de la Cruz. The move forces Purefoods to guard Hugnatan with their small forward (usually Marc Pingris), which means Sakuragi couldn’t go out and harass either of Alaska’s guards out in the perimeter. Unlike with dela Cruz, Purefoods can’t get away with guarding Hugnatan with James Yap.

But big ball only works when you can actually go with a big lineup, and Alaska couldn’t go big when Sonny Thoss got into foul trouble. I’ve mentioned before in my post about Alaska and in my FHM preview that Thoss might be the Aces’ most important player, and it was on full display last night, as Purefoods feasted on them when he was on the bench. This is why the Samigue Eman pickup could potentially be so great for Alaska, because if the big guy can develop, the Aces wouldn’t have to take such a big hit when Thoss is chilling on the bench.

One more thing I’d like to note about the game last night was LA Tenorio starting to pull all his crap again. The flopping, the flailing, the posturing, the ‘incidental’ forearms he leaves on his defender before getting the ball on the inbounds, and just his general smarmy douchiness. He was in tip-top OA Tenorio form all game long, and I think that he squandered all of Alaska’s karma after game 2. The basketball gods do not suffer douchebags gladly.

Alaska now faces very tall odds in this series. Will they win? Probably not. Can they win? Since we started with some stats stuff, let me throw out this old post from ESPN’s John Hollinger writing about 0-3 comebacks in the NBA:

All 83 times that a team has taken a 3-0 lead in an NBA best-of-seven playoff series, it has gone on to win the series.

But somebody is going to be the first to buck the trend. It happened for the first time in baseball with the Red Sox a few years ago, and inevitably it will happen in basketball, too.

And when would it happen? Most likely with a team that's basically as good as its opponent.

The logic applies too in the PBA. If a comeback from a 0-3 deficit were to happen – and at this point, the chances are very, very slim – it would happen when two teams are evenly matched. Patay ang Butiki noted that, before the series, each team had practically the same point-differential over its opponents. Statistically, the teams were about the same. You can’t get more evenly-matched than that.

I spent the past couple of days back at my family’s ancestral home in Middle of Nowhere, Iloilo to attend to some family matters, so I missed the second game of the Philippine Cup finals between Purefoods and Alaska. Quite serendipitously, I ran into Patricia Bermudez-Hizon and Vince ‘The Prince’ Hizon in the airport just before my flight back to Manila, and they filled me on what happened in game 2.

Back at home a couple of hours later, I watched video of referee Maui Maurillo calling a bailout foul on Alaska’s Joe Devance while defending Kerby Raymundo’s desperation jumper with 1.7 seconds left.



That call was bullshit. Complete, utter bullshit.

I hate the call as a Purefoods fan – and, if I may, a prominent enough fan for the team’s coach to feel the need to address my comments – because I don’t want to win half as much as I want to win the right way. The controversy of this call undermines all the efforts of my team, from James Yap’s game-long brilliance (32 points on 20 shots), to Kerby Raymundo’s clutch hit, to the excellent work by the Purefoods coaching staff in preparing the team for Alaska’s adjustments after game 1.

After the game, Alaska team manager Joaqui Trillo said, “I don’t think Purefoods was happy with the win. I think they would have wanted to earn the win instead of it being given to them on a silver platter.” I’m not too sure about the Purefoods team, but this Purefoods fan completely feels that way.

Now the only thing people will remember about this game will be Maurillo’s bullshit call, instead of the Purefoods furious rally at the end of the game. The only video people will be watching from the game will be that last play, instead of excellent James Yap sequence that Dre Gonzales described, “James Yap just hit the shot of the year. An alley oop caught with one hand and with one motion laid it up with a finger roll.” It sounds like a highlight for the ages, and I don’t know if it will ever see the light of YouTube.

I hate the call as an admirer of the Alaska basketball organization. I could only imagine how the whole team feels today, but I’m sure that the Alaska brain trust is trying their best to get the team to move forward and not feel too sorry for themselves. As Francis Ochoa deftly points out, Alaska has taken the high road in their response to the incident.

I hope they come out fighting today, and give their fans a good effort. Fans like Steve Racelis, who apparently suffered a heart attack at the end of the game and underwent brain surgery yesterday.

I hate the call, most of all, as a PBA fan. My favorite kind of feedback is from people who tell me that they haven’t been watching the PBA, but have done so again because of stuff I’d been writing, and they’re always surprised by how great it is. This is the best Philippine basketball has to offer, the game Rafe Bartholomew passionately raves about, most recently in FreeDarko.

Maurillo’s bullshit call undermines my case. Over the course of this tournament, there has been a lot of righteous indignation over the Wynne Arboleda incident and the Talk N Text walkout, and in each instance, the offending party were assessed heavy penalties.

This is almost as bad, because it robs fans of the opportunity to witness two great teams duking it out for the win. Hell, I’m a Purefoods fan, and my team got the win, and I’m pissed off about Maurillo’s stupid call. I don’t see any reason why significant penalties shouldn’t be assessed by the PBA on Maurillo, who also happened to work the Talk N Text walkout game.

Think about how big a stage the PBA finals is, and how much money the PBA will lose from fans turned off by this bullshit call. If this were any other industry, Maurillo would be fired by now.

Here’s the thing: before I was a fan of anything else, I was a fan of Purefoods as a kid, and I still am, despite the ridiculous (and frankly, kinda gay) nicknames like Tender Juicy Hotdogs, Corned Beef Cowboys, Carne Norte Beefies, Chunkee Giants, and Tender Juicy Giants. I’ve remained a loyal fan through the years, Ryan “The Genius” Gregorio notwithstanding.

It should come as no surprise then that I’m absolutely, ridiculously stoked about Purefoods’ upcoming semifinals series versus San Miguel. Not only is the team making its first semifinals appearance in two years (a drought courtesy of Ryan’s genius), but it’s going up against an old school traditional rival. Sure, battling Sta. Lucia and Red Bull was fun, but playing San Miguel evokes pleasant childhood memories of Alvin Patrimonio camping out on the low block and making Yves Dignadice his bitch.

All season long, I had been trying to figure out ways to show my support for the team if they made it to the semifinals. In early January, I finally found the perfect way to express my allegiance: I was going to send the whole team cupcakes! Unfortunately, events that happened over the last few weeks have torpedoed that idea.

So I had to find another way to boost my team, then I realized, Hey, I have a blog! I can do a total fanboy post! I originally wanted to do a fanboy post for my favorite player on the team, barumbado point guard Roger Yap, but there just wasn’t enough material on the web about him; I might be his only fan outside his immediate family and the screaming bading chorus behind the Purefoods baseline. So I’ll just do my fanboy post on James Yap instead.

Let’s start with a highlight for the ages. In the dying seconds of a game against Air 21 in the 2008-09 Philippine Cup, Purefoods was down by three with the ball. Kerby Raymundo threw up a three-pointer and missed, but Yap beat Arwind Santos for the offensive rebound, chased the ball to the corner, tiptoed the baseline and the sideline, and launched a turnaround, fadeaway three-pointer from behind the backboard to tie the game.

Read that paragraph again.

Yeah, it's as awesome as it sounds:



Next, here’s his Nike commercial from the ‘My Game’ campaign in 2007:



It’s easily the best commercial in the series, mostly because James spoke in Hiligaynon, which made his dialogue seem more natural. Speaking in his native tongue betrayed a swagger that’s rarely seen during his TV interviews, especially at the end, when he says, “Basta hampang ka lang ah. Enjoy ka lang sa gina-obra mo. Ina sikreto da.”

Finally, this next one was forwarded to me by Rafe Bartholomew, who now apparently trolls the interwebs for these things. Neither Rafe nor I authored this video. We bear no responsibility, if Kris Aquino decides to pay the author a “civil” visit at home.

Last Sunday, with little fanfare about the night’s event, 13,000 fans trooped to the Araneta Coliseum to watch an early season game between Ginebra and Purefoods (and perhaps, the matchup between the returning Mark Caguioa and James Yap). They didn’t seem to mind the dark cloud looming over the league with the Wynne Arboleda incident, or the mushrooming negative sentiment all over the Internet against the league after Powerade Team Pilipinas’ debacle in the Fiba-Asia Championship.

The people who attended the game were treated to an exciting ball game by the league’s two most popular teams (a 2008 SWS survey found that Ginebra had the biggest following in Luzon, but fans from the Visayas and Mindanao preferred Purefoods). It was a fun, action-packed 48 minutes, with the players going hard and making big plays. Ginebra coach Jong Uichico masterfully lured Purefoods’ Ryan Gregorio into playing small-ball with a junk zone defense, neutralizing the Giants’ size advantage. Purefoods almost won anyway—does any other PBA team win in spite of its coach?—behind James Yap’s game-long brilliance and Peter June Simon’s balls of steel. But Ginebra came through, behind big plays from Jayjay Helterbrand, Willie Wilson (who had a career game outplaying Kerby Raymundo), and Ronald Tubid, who was just plain electric throughout the whole second half while hamming it up for the crowd.

It’s a popular chorus that the PBA is a dying league, for so many reasons. It usually comes from people who were never big fans of the league in the first place, or who haven’t been in a while, or who do not know what they’re talking about. A few months ago, I argued that the perception that PBA players play passionless ball (compared to, say, NBA players) is probably not true, or at least, fair. Last year, former Solar Sports executive Jude Turcuato pointed out that PBA viewership actually dwarfs that of the UAAP.

Last Sunday, the PBA was alive and well and beaming and vibrant. A friend of mine wrote about how her husband (a Ginebra fan) took their five-year old to the game, and the boy had a helluva time. It’s been a good opening week for the league, the Wynne incident notwithstanding.

Some more basketball related thoughts about the first week of the new season, after the jump.