THE signs were all there, and the ceremony was mean and ruthless.
Philippine Cup champion San Miguel Beer waylaid Alaska in a game that sent the Beermen knocking at the gates of a second title in the 40th season of the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA), and their 21st overall in pro league history.
Many saw it as classic San Miguel victory, one snatched from almost certain defeat by an unforgiving defense, and by the hot hands of Arizona Reid. His 41 points, scored from every conceivable angle, matched his season-high, and was so hardworking he hauled down 12 rebounds.
To many more, however, the Aces had a problem. They called it the fourth-quarter silence. With a chance to sew up the contest and save their season from the brink, they couldn’t buy a basket in more than five minutes of a game where their survival was at stake. As demonstrated so many times in this series, they had little, or no more, to give when the valiant Beermen cranked up their game in crunch time.
All told, the Beermen held down the Aces to a miserable 12 points down the stretch of Game Three on Wednesday night to turn an 81-85 deficit in the final seven minutes to a 96-89 win, their third straight. They are now tantalizingly a win away from capturing the PBA Governors’ Cup title.
Basketball is apologizing, but the way things stand now, a four-game sweep of the best-of-seven series looms. The Aces are down in a 0-3 hole. Of the previous 12 teams that had found themselves in such a predicament, no one had survived to turn around the series.
Of the 11 teams that fell into that ravine, only the 1977 Alaska crew could extend the series to Game Six before eventually bowing out to Gordon Gins, 4-2. Four teams that raced to a 3-0 lead went on to sweep the series. Four needed five games to win.
The Aces will become 13th victim in this miserable statistical column when the Beermen will go for the title clincher today (Friday). Unless the Aces dig deep into their reserves and wring that extra ounce of heroism to stop the coming of the night.
“Like I have said before, you need four wins to win this,” the unassuming SMB Coach Leo Austria declared when told that the series was all but over.
The former Shell Rimula X guard spoke from bitter experience, recalling that stunning game-winning shot by Ginebra guard Rudy Distrito in Game Seven of the 1991 First Conference that saw the Kings rising from the grave of a 1-3 deficit to complete a dramatic comeback.
“I tried to go after Rudy to defend the shot but I was too late. I have not forgotten,” he said, adding that he would always remind his players to treat every game as a championship because, “mathematically, it’s still possible for them to come back.”
For Coach Austria, Game Four is still a do-or-die game. “We will not stop working until one is finally declared a champion.” He was all praises for the courage and intensity of his players. “I can’t say anything more. They simply refused to give up. They refused to lose.”
Honor is at stake for the Aces when they go up against the Beermen, hoping to alter the landscape of the finals and rewrite history. They entered the series with the worthiest credentials, posting huge victories in the quarterfinals and the semis, and enjoying a five-day rest.
But Alaska squandered an opportunity to change the outcome and level the series in Game Two after absorbing a 78-108 loss in Game One, this time blowing a nine-point lead in the final seven minutes by going scoreless as San Miguel turned to their treymakers to eke out a 103-95 victory.
It was already half-past midnight when I reached home on Wednesday because of the horrendous traffic, which has now become the new normal in our lives. It should have been half-past the series for the Beermen that needed only Arizona Reid to wax hot in the next game and June Mar Fajardo to remain scot-free.
In many aspects, the Beermen are like the Golden State Warriors with a galaxy of outside shooters—Reid, Alex Cabagnot, Marcio Lassiter, Chris Lutz and Arwin Santos—and a big bonus in the giant Fajardo, who simply proved to be indestructible under the boards, doing big damage to the enemy.
Consider this. San Miguel made 28 triples in Game One and a whopping 40 points in Game Two. In Game Three, while Reid fired 41 points, Fajardo, who will be crowned the Most Valuable Player (MVP) for the second straight year today, logged 14 points and grabbed 19 rebounds.
Unless Fajardo is double-teamed and handcuffed and prevented near the paint, and Reid woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, the Beermen are headed for a clean sweep of the series.
“We will be there playing. If San Miguel is to win the series, they have to earn it,” said Alaska Coach Alex Compton, stunned and unable to solve the continuing SMB riddle, except noting that Austria’s aces have been winning “the grind-it-out type of games.”
My SMB die-hard son, RJ, calls it, “In and out game, like the Warriors.”