Barangay Ginebra San Miguel coach Tim Cone only has 1,679 tweets since he opened his Twitter account in 2009, but that doesn’t mean he’s aware of fan conversations about a certain sister team going for a rare grand slam.
“I read some Twitter things that says ‘Oh, San Miguel’s gonna win the grand slam’ and someone says ‘Oh, Ginebra could stop them from winning the grand slam’ and someone would say, ‘No, management will tell Ginebra not to stop them from winning the grand slam,’” Cone told a pair of scribes in jest following Ginebra’s 107-85 win over Star in a tune-up game Tuesday at the Upper Deck Sports Center in Ortigas.
“Are you kidding me?! Even if management told us that, we wouldn’t do it, but of course they would never told us that,” he added in response to a question regarding Ginebra’s motivation to foil its sister team’s bid to complete the PBA’s sixth grand slam.
Many fans would believe such perception, given the rarity of such feat. However, Cone, a two-time grand slam winner, has more than just denying the Beermen another trip to the winner’s podium in his mind.
Ginebra is the reigning champion of the season-ending conference and is hungry to add another trophy following the disappointment of falling short in the previous two conferences that included a five-game loss to San Miguel in the Philippine Cup Finals.
Cone is confident of Ginebra’s chances, with last year’s final hero Justin Brownlee back following an impressive Commissioner’s Cup campaign and Greg Slaughter returning from a lengthy absence because of a knee injury.
“We want to win our own, we’re not gonna step aside and let them try win a championship. We would never do that, even if it was for a grand slam or not,” he said. “It’s a good way to get fired, I’ll tell you that, letting some other team win because they’re your sister team. We got to do our own winning anyway.”
Star coach Chito Victolero has more pressing concerns. His Hotshots are eyeing a finals berth for the first time since Cone led the franchise to the 2014 grand slam under the San Mig Super Coffee banner, and have come close in the last two conferences, losing to Ginebra and San Miguel in the semifinals.
“Our goal is to win the championship, yun naman ang goal ng each team e,” Victolero said.
The Governors’ Cup may not just be a journey of the Beermen’s bid for immortality, but also a challenge for the two other San Miguel Corporation teams to play the role of spoilers and emerge as the company’s center of attention.
“Our No. 1 rival is not TNT, not Meralco, or Alaska. Our No. 1 rival – San Miguel, our No. 2 rival – Star, we want to beat those guys more than anyone else, I’m sure,” Cone stressed. “It’s like having three brothers and each brother is trying to fight to get the attention of the dad, and we’re all fighting for attention.
“We enjoy beating them more than we enjoy beating anybody else. Now management would prefer us to beat TNT but for us, we want to beat San Miguel and we want to beat Star, those are the big rivals and they feel the same way, I know it because I can feel it.”
