By REYNALD MAGALLON
There’s no such thing as moral victories for Tim Cone.
For the Gilas Pilipinas mentor, the outcome is only about winning or losing, and sadly for the Nationals, the result did not come out exactly what they wanted it to be.
“I’m not going to sit here and pretend like I’m happy about our performance. The bottom line is we’re not going to feel good or take pride in the fact that we got close, or we almost won, or whatever,” said Cone after the close 69-66 loss against New Zealand at the Mall of Asia Arena on Thursday, Feb. 26.
“Bottom line, we’re here to win, we didn’t do that. There were certain parts of the game that I thought, we did well, we defended well, we competed on the boards,” said Cone
The Nationals indeed had their moments in the contest especially in the early goings where they led by as many as seven.
Gilas also had a last ditch rally in the final frame where they threatened the visiting team when they cut the lead down to just two, 64-66 after trailing by as many as 11 in the quarter.
But sloppy stretches particularly in the third frame when they failed to execute offensively with just nine points to show simply came haunting the hosts in the end.
“I hate saying that, well, we didn’t make shots, because there’s more to the game than just making shots, and that’s an easy explanation, but if you’re saying that, it’s usually because you’re not getting good shots, and we didn’t get the shots that we wanted,” said Cone.
“We didn’t get the flow that we wanted, credit goes to them, because they defended well as well,” he explained.
And that defensive effort from the Tall Blacks couldn’t be more evident in their success in throwing Justin Brownlee out of his rhythm all throughout the game.
The Gilas naturalized player was limited to just four points and was even held scoreless through the first two frames.
And while there’s some positives in seeing other players step up and keep it close despite Brownlee’s struggles, Cone is just not buying it.
“We’re not going to take any pride in almost winning, or making the game close, or whatever, you know, we showed up to win, and we didn’t do that tonight.
