At the start of the Philippine Basketball Association Governors’ Cup, the Barangay Ginebra San Miguel Gin Kings were not in the best shape. Heck, they even did not expect to make it all the way to the finals.
They were in seventh place during the elimination round, with a dismal a 5-5 record following a 103-115 loss to the NLEX Road Warriors.
Back then, Gin Kings’ coach Tim Cone felt their situation was unacceptable.
Cone was worried after noting that some of his key players were struggling.
“Japeth (Aguilar) and Christian (Standhardinger) were struggling, while they were on the floor together. Justin (Brownlee) was still trying to get his legs,” said Cone during the weekly program, “Power and Play.”
The long layoffs due to COVID-19 restrictions have also somehow affected the performances of the Kings’ two best players.
On the other hand, Brownlee was having trouble getting his game back after taking a long layoff with Al Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates Basketball League. While in the UAE tournament, the prolific Brownlee contracted COVID-19 and was sidelined for some time.
“He was really out of basketball for a long time. He had a hard time trying to get himself back to peak form and in peak shape. And so, we were struggling, and he was struggling,” said Cone.
The team eventually addressed their woes during one of the team’s huddles, when Cone challenged the team’s leadership.
“We challenged the leadership on the team. We brought the team together and told them that we have been through this. This is done, and we can’t do a thing about it. But we can work from here. And we talked about leadership, and how our leaders needed to step up,” added Cone.
The Gin Kings eventually turned things around as they went on to beat the TNT Tropang Giga twice in the quarterfinals to reach the best-of-five semifinals against the NLEX Road Warriors, whom Ginebra beat in three of four matches to advance to the finals.
“Momentum is really a fickle thing. You have it or you don’t. And we started generating a lot of momentum and kind of grabbed hold of that. And we’ve been going with it ever since,” added Cone of his wards who will be riding the crest of this momentum all the way to the championship round.
Last Wednesday, Brownlee impressed with one of his best games in five conferences as he led the Gin Kings to another finals’ stint when he scored a season-high 47 points to help power Ginebra to a 112-93 smothering of NLEX in Game 4.
The Gin Kings will clash with the Meralco Bolts, who are returning to the finals after two long years. Game 1 is set on Wednesday.