By REYNALD MAGALLON
TNT import Rondae Hollis-Jefferson vowed to be better after failing to deliver when it mattered the most in Game 2 of their PBA Season 49 Commissioner’s Cup finals against Barangay Ginebra.
With the Tropang Giga close to completing a comeback from double-digit deficit, Hollis-Jefferson was forced to turn the ball and make an off-balanced shot in TNT’s last two possessions preserving a 71-70 win for Ginebra.
Though obviously dismayed with how the end game went, evident when he laid down the court for quite some time after the final buzzer sounded, Hollis-Jefferson was not too hard on himself and instead just promised to bounce back and pick up the pieces from those crucial mistakes.
“I’m going to learn from it, and that’s something I’m going to get better at. Something I’m going to get better at, learn from it, grow from it, and you know, I’ll watch it,” said Hollis-Jefferson after the game.
“I’ll probably watch that shot 20 times,.”
“I’ll watch it. I’m not afraid to see where I messed up, where I made a mistake. Hopefully, Chot calls me out for it,” he added.
Hollis-Jefferson’s first blunder happened when he got the ball against a Ginebra triple-team. He could have released the ball to his open teammates but opted to force the issue which resulted in a 24-second shot clock violation.
Eager to make up for it, the ball went to his hands once again, this time, with TNT in dire need of a basket. He tried to break down Stephen Holt’s defense but lost it after a surprise swipe from a double team from Scottie Thompson.
The moment he regained control of the ball, he had to put it up off-balanced.
“I expected the double. They didn’t want me to get the shot off at the last seconds.
They knew I wanted to shoot the ball, but when I lost it, I just couldn’t pick it back up,” he added.
For Ginebra’s part, head coach Tim Cone said the Kings were simply prepared for Hollis-Jefferson and his wards read him like a textbook.
“We know they’re going to try to get the ball to Rondae, and Rondae’s going to create. Steven did a great job of containing him. We fired him from the sides. Once he got his head down and the ball started getting loose, we did a good job of firing him,” Cone said of the final play.
“No one person’s going to take R.H.J. one-on-one by themselves. Steve knows that. Jamie knows that. They know, as well as they’re playing defensively, it’s really a team defense that they’re getting to,” he added.
