FILIPINO-AMERICAN Matt Ganuelas-Rosser signed a two-year contract with TNT Tropang Giga to reunite with his original team in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA).
But getting sentimental wasn’t the only reason why Ganuelas-Rosser preferred TNT over Terrafirma, which offered the 31-year-old wingman a contract extension after he joined the unrestricted free agent bandwagon.
“The biggest thing is I wanted to be on a team that’s contending for championships,” Matt Ganuelas-Rosser told BusinessMirror on Monday. “I want to win, I want to be there at the end, I want to be on a team that’s going to push for a championship because that’s like what I have been in my whole basketball career.”
At TNT, Ganuelas-Rosser, called MGR by his peers, won’t be groping under head coach Chot Reyes’s system. A fourth overall pick by NLEX in the 2014 Rookie Draft, he was dealt to the Tropang Giga in a three-way trade that also involved NorthPort.
He won a Commissioner’s Cup title in his three years with TNT before he was traded to San Miguel Beer for guard RR Garcia in 2017. As a Beerman, he collected four titles until he was shipped to Terrafirma February last year as part of the 3-for-1 player trade for CJ Perez.
“It’s sort of a homecoming. A lot of players when I was there are still there, so I’m really familiar with the coaches and their system, especially with Coach Chot [Reyes],” said Ganuelas-Rosser, son of former US Navyman James who was stationed in Subic and Gina who hails from La Union. “He’s [Reyes] my first coach in the Philippines.”
Ganuelas-Rosser skipped the shortened PBA season in 2020 but returned in the previous Philippine Cup and averaged 5 points, 2.0 rebounds. 1.8 assists and 2.0 steals in five games with Terrafirma.
A father of four lovely little daughters—Nalah (8), Shiloh (7), Venus (4) and Violet (2) with wife Brittany, Ganuelas-Rosser started training in a TNT uniform on Monday.