Friday, August 31, 2012

LA Tenorio: a better upgrade than Chris Tiu

LA Tenorio. Photo courtesy: spin.ph

LA Tenorio to Ginebra. Who would have thought Noli Eala can pull a Mitch Kupchak trade? Just right after his big time performance against the Americans, I tweeted his trade value will go crazy. And it became a reality. The deal was as complex as a calculus math problem. But everything fell into the right place, thanks to our sister teams Petron and...Barako.  

And right now, the decision of picking Chris Ellis over Chris Tiu makes sense. Some of the barangay hopefuls were disappointed as the management did not choose the most popular rookie. Fans know what the team needs, a legit point guard. Instead, they got an athletic forward who will give rotation headaches to Siot Tanquincen. Ellis needs to prove himself so he can take some minutes off Ababou and Maliksi. But that's a different article. So..

Ginebra is replicating the Lakers in a good and positive way. Both teams made off-season moves to bolster their lineups. Strong got even stronger. But just like coach Siot said, the championship is not a guarantee. 

How many times did LA kill Ginebra? Don't know but one thing's for sure, he likes to play against us. Which is why I'm glad he's now with the team. Who remembers the LA Tenorio heartbreaking game winner trey against Ginebra last February 18, 2012? That hurts so bad. Here's the link, at the 1:43 mark, the Lieutenant hits the dagger: Tenorio's heroics help Alaska pull road miracle vs Ginebra

To sum things up, LA Tenorio is a better upgrade than Chris Tiu. We don't need fan base, we're already established. Do I sound bitter? Kidding aside, both are proven winners but the former has more experience and clutch DNA in his game. Tenorio is also a natural point guard that could help facilitate the offense of Ginebra. Any given night he knows how to put the ball in the basket and could be relied upon taking big shots. 

LA will definitely feel the love of Ginebra fans as the season nears its opening on September 30. This blog post is for him. Welcome to the Barangay Ginebra San Miguel family! Follow him on twitter : @LA_Tenorio

PBA blockbuster deal: Winners and losers

The latest trade in the PBA features six players changing uniforms for the upcoming 38th season. And the teams involved are half the number of squads in the league : Alaska, Ginebra, Barako, Petron and GlobalPort. This one will definitely shake things up in PBA.

So let's see who came out on top and who struck out in this gigantic deal. 

Winners:
Alaska Aces logo

Alaska
The Alaska Aces know what they're doing. They took advantage of LA Tenorio's uprising in the Jones Cup where he played big time and won the tournament MVP award. Right after that, his trade value went on a crazy level. Mr. Uytengsu did not waste time to use it so he can get two solid starters in JV Casio and Dondon Hontiveros. Youth and experience combined is a welcome addition for the new look Aces. 

LA Tenorio and BGSM
He is the man of the moment and it will continue even more as he suits up for the most popular ball club in the league, the Barangay Ginebra San Miguel. Expect showtime as Ginebra injects new blood in the lineup. 

Petron
The Petron Blaze Boosters helped their sister team in this trade. But it also helps them unload Hontiveros to somehow ease the squad's problematic player rotation. 

Enrico Villanueva
Just like John Wilson and KG Canaleta, Rico will get more playing time with his new team. When he was with Ginebra, it's either a DNP-Coach's decision or limited minutes.

Losers:
GlobalPort team logo
GlobalPort
Some may think GlobalPort also won in this deal. Well, you got a point. But for me, trading your no.1 pick for an ageing 2-time MVP is senseless. I understand Mikee Romero's vision of win-now philosophy. And he really has this affection for Miller. But he said it will take two years to rebuild his team, meaning he's not yet done with player movements. The most important thing to note, Willie Miller will be 37 by that time if my math is right. 

Barako
Seriously, where do you think this team is headed? Are they following Powerade's foot steps? Or are they the long lost, adopted sister of the SMC family? Hope not. But they're showing some signs. 

Hans Thiele and Wesley Gonzales
These two gentlemen might be headed to ABL. Or if they make it to the final roster, don't expect minutes and exposure for these guys. If you're a non-superstar player, your wish is not to be traded to Petron or Ginebra. 

Overall, Alaska and LA Tenorio's new team Ginebra San Miguel won this trade. The Aces are younger and will surely make a big impact in the 38th season. For Ginebra, they finally got what they wanted since Helterbrand and Cortez are catching up to father time. 

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

New GSM additions create redundancies at forward position.


If you think the addition of Chris Ellis, Keith Jensen and Elmer Espiritu only brings positive outcomes, think twice. Actually they create more problems for the coaches of this GSM team. 

Some say having many talents in a roster is a good problem. Well, it isn't. Just look at the Petron team last year. Everyone's competing for playing minutes. Which is why I think KG Canaleta and John Wilson are happier now because they can play on a team that needs their services. 

I'm sure everyone agrees that it is a pain to watch a talented player sit on the bench and does nothing but to do high fives every time a time out is called. 

And that's my fear coming into the season. I don't want to see Rico Maierhofer, Allein Maliksi and the others doing only high fives. Because it's not right. Even in the basketball world, there's what you call injustice. 

So let me enumerate the GSM players who play the small forward (SF) and power forward position (PF). 

SF: Dylan Ababou, Allein Maliksi, Chris Ellis
PF: Willy Wilson, Rico Maierhofer, Rudy Hatfield, Kerby Raymundo, Elmer Espiritu, Keith Jensen

If I count it right, that's about 9 players fighting for a position that can only be played for 48 minutes.

And even if I'm not a coach, I can easily predict that two or three of them will get to do what chicken hens do, warm the bench. 

Or even Espiritu won't make it to the final roster. It turns out that the trade only worsens his career. 

Last year, Dylan Ababou and Allein Maliksi didn't get the right minutes. With the Ellis addition, it only makes their basketball lives tougher. One thing I can suggest is to use Maliksi as a back up shooting guard for Mark Caguioa. But we must also remember that Ronald Tubid might do a comeback. Either way, it will be tough for Maliksi to get his desired minutes. 

At the power forward position, it gets even trickier. Just like Ababou and Maliksi, Maierhofer was not fully utilized. And with Jensen in, expect more rotation problems right? Because let's admit it, Willy Wilson will still be coach Siot's favorite. Rudy Hatfield won't get his usual minutes. Kerby Raymundo might go out on twitter complaining about his minutes too.

And For Espiritu, sorry but I can't even imagine seeing him play for the barangay. 

Last season, coach Siot tried to do the Yeng Guiao. Different starting lineups and rotation every game. But he's not coach Yeng. Was he able to make everyone satisfied? No. You can see that on everyone's faces except Mark Caguioa. Now, I really wonder how will he manage rotation problems with this current lineup. 

Unless a trade happens, I don't see those 9 forwards getting their desired playing time. 

Redundancies are not good in any sense. They create problems. You can solve them by eradicating some. In the basketball world, make a trade if you're not going to use their talents.  

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Team USA as good as gold again

Source: ESPN

USA Basketball
TEAM USA

When the game was mercifully over and another Olympic escape was finally complete, Chris Paul made one last mad dash to the ball. Unveiling his best Usain Bolt, Paul darted all the way across the floor to quickly snatch it away from Team USA rookie Anthony Davis and hustle it back to the bench.
This time, Paul made sure that he'd be taking the ball home.
This time, uncomfortably close as it was, Paul and LeBron James and Kobe Bryant -- as well as a pretty pivotal newcomer named Kevin Durant -- got it all against Spain.
They got an even tougher gold-medal game from the second-best team in world basketball, but the Americans couldn't have ended it any happier, celebrating as if they had won in another Olympic rout. Blessed with a little too much firepower, even with all those big names missing through injury and its well-chronicled size limitations, Team USA ultimately secured a 107-100 triumph here Sunday that sent a thoroughly giddy (and relieved) bunch of NBA All-Stars to the top of the medal platform to collect their golds ... and soon had Paul gleefully tweeting a picture of his prized new possession.
Paul had tried the same trick at the buzzer back in 2008 in Beijing, only for tournament officials to order him to surrender the brown-and-white Molten leather in the locker room later. Four years later, though, he would not be denied the ultimate souvenir, because Paul moved too fast for the security guards at O2 Arena.
Spanish defenders know the feeling.
"If it's not Kevin Durant, it's LeBron James," Spanish guard Juan Carlos Navarro lamented after his 19-point first half, combined with Pau Gasol's brilliant third quarter, only wound up slightly closing the 11-point gap that separated these nations at the '08 Olympics.
"If it's not one, it's the other one."
Or, as seen on this tremendous occasion featuring 16 lead changes, it's Durant and a foul-plagued James getting a crunch-time lift from Paul, with Bryant (17 points) and Kevin Love (nine points and nine boards) chipping in, too, all on an afternoon when the United States surrendered triple digits for the first time in the tournament despite the fact that Spain was down to one Gasol brother for half the game.
The reality is that Team USA, for as much as it talks up its defense, is going to have to take that side of the ball more seriously as the rest of the world continues to advance. The Yanks' uber-athletes do far too much gambling, too much overplaying, and teams that really move the ball punish those bad habits.
Yet there can be no quarrel with the togetherness and collective fight that this group gave Mike Krzyzewski in what the USA coach insists was his final game in charge. They've only been together since July 5, compared to a pack of Spaniards that's largely been playing together since their teen years, but there was some serious rallying for the cause in the U.S. camp when James -- who frequently found himself guarding a Gasol because of all the big men missing for Coach K -- went to the bench with 7:23 to go with his fourth foul.
Durant kept firing until he had the first 30-point game in an Olympic final in U.S. history. After Durant's hot hand convinced Spain to throw a box-and-one defense at Team USA's sharpshooter, Paul followed up with a big 3 and two crucial drives for buckets, with the latter just beating the shot clock. And James, soon enough, came back to make it all safe, first with a hammer dunk that opened up by all the attention Durant was attracting by what he later called the first box-and-one coverage he's ever seen in the pros, then with a 3-pointer inside the final two minutes over an isolated Marc Gasol that made it 102-93.
"Big thanks to Lithuania for that tough game they gave us," Paul said, crediting a 99-94 scare in pool play for helping Team USA cope with the tension of a tight game when it mattered most.
It also didn't hurt their cause that Spain coach Sergio Scariolo, in what he called both a "risk" and a "mistake," left Marc Gasol in with three fouls in the second quarter and soon watched him collect No. 4. The Americans, though, saw no need to apologize for the tight scoreline, especially given their own foul trouble in a first-half whistle fest. So they reacted with the same vigor you'd have expected had they triumphed with one last London downpour of 3s.
LeBron exchanged long and tight hugs with both Krzyzewski and Durant before the final horn had even blown, after which Coach K caught the eye by jumping up and down on the medal stand.
"It's been a great ride for me," said James, who joined Michael Jordan on the short list of players to win a gold medal, an NBA championship and the MVP trophy in the same season.
"I could have never scripted it this way. A lot of people doubted us. They said we were too small. Like Chris said, it's not about size, it's about heart. And I'm happy we have so much heart on our team."
Said Krzyzewski, when asked to compare his team's corresponding lack of continuity to the years of know-how and timing that the Spaniards have used to become Europe's best: "We just don't react as well instinctively to each other as they do. The bond and camaraderie that we have, I would take it over anybody's."
Krzyzewski and Bryant nonetheless insisted afterward that this was their shared swansong, leaving James and Durant and USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo to carry the program forward. LeBron will only 31 when it's time for the 2016 Games in Brazil ... and Colangelo optimistically believes that he'll be convinced to stick around and become the Americans' first four-time Olympian in basketball.
"LeBron is building such a legacy in terms of who he is and his personal accomplishments, he's moving himself apart from everyone else [in the modern game] and one more run might appeal to him," Colangelo said.
"It's hard for someone to give it up if they have to."
Just look at what a spot on this squad has done to Paul. On top of his fevered quest to get that game ball and get it signed afterward by all of his teammates, one of the proudest Wake Forest Demon Deacons you could ever wish to meet was openly professing his affection for Duke's hoops patriarch. In public.
"It's hard for me to say out of these lips," Paul said of Krzyzewski, "but I love him."
Said Bryant, still processing the close call: "It was emotional. It was a little journey for us. It was tough. They're much bigger than we were and they know how to use [the size]."
Bryant's first postgame move, predictably, was to head straight to Spain's bench, right behind Krzyzewski, to pay tribute to the crushed Gasol, his Lakers teammate who lived up to every ounce of his pre-tournament "I'm a beast" proclamation with 24 points, 8 boards and 7 assists.
But Gasol's beastly best was always a long shot to offset the Americans' crazy depth, no matter how well Spain executed and protected the ball. Losing Ricky Rubio or a four-foul first half for Marc Gasol is a killer for Spain. Team USA, by contrast, can withstand the absence of Dwight Howard and Blake Griffin, Dwayne Wade and Derrick Rose, just by asking Carmelo Anthony and LeBron to steal minutes at center and winning with, as Scariolo said, "basically five players on the perimeter."
Not that James, captain of the small-ballers, saw any other option.
"I'm not allowed to lose," LeBron said, repeating the claim he's made all summer about his first title in Miami taking zero pressure off him.
The decision on what to do with championship ring No. 1 doesn't have to be made for a few months yet, since James won't even collect it until the end of October. Yet he hasn't forgotten those four long summers that preceded this one, when he only had that gold medal from Beijing to supply visual validation.
"It's up in my office in a case," LeBron told ESPN.com the other day. "So I see it a lot."
Regular-season MVP for the third time. 2012 NBA Finals MVP in conjunction with his long-awaited title breakthrough. And now another gold for the collection.
That office, even moreso than Paul's, is starting to get a little cluttered

Friday, August 3, 2012

Chris Tiu joins 2012 PBA Draft

Source: GMA News

Former Ateneo Blue Eagle and captain of the first incarnation of the Smart Gilas National Team Chris Tiu has submitted the necessary paperwork to join the 2012 PBA Draft.


Tiu tweeted out Friday morning, "Hello PBA :)" on his Twitter account @chris_tiu, putting to rest several weeks of speculation.

The 27-year-old opted to skip the draft last season in the hopes of still becoming part of the next incarnation of the Philippine basketball national team. A shift in the squad's philosophy however, saw its new head coach, Chot Reyes, opt to tap players from the professional ranks, as opposed to amateurs and semi-pro's, which meant Tiu could still be included in the team, even while playing for the PBA.

Tiu was most recently a member of the SEABA squad that won first place in Singapore, qualifying the country for the FIBA Asia Cup in Lebanon later this year.


The 5'11" guard beat the 5 pm buzzer to submit the paperwork required in order to make the August 3 deadline for Filipino applicants.

Said PBA commissioner Chito Salud in a statement, "We all know Chris [Tiu] compared to others is not one that jumps the highest, runs the fastest, shoots the best. And yet he comes out again and again as the leader of his team, be it in his collegiate days and then during his stint in the national team.


The 2012 incarnation of the draft is set for August 19 at the Robinson's Midtown Manila mall. The Petron Blaze Boosters boast of the overall number one draft pick.