WHEN you have a point guard like LA Tenorio, your chances of victory are as rosy as the outlook of a revitalized Philippine-China relations. Like Digong, Tenorio makes things happen at the most unexpected moments.
Tenorio does not only direct plays with surgical precision, he issues assists as accurate as Swiss watches as well.
When Tenorio’s team is in disarray, in disorderly manner, he restores order ASAP, a la Bato Dela Rosa.
Tenorio terrifies foes in cold-blood, subtly poker-faced, and alternating also as the unlikely silent assassin, as in a movie thriller that makes him the ultimate, hitherto, unknown hero in the mold of a Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, or even a Charles Bronson.
Tenorio’s total genius he unleashed in Game 6, the match that would either make Barangay Ginebra champ or Meralco live another day in the best-of-seven PBA Governors’ Cup Finals.
As Tenorio was used to orchestrating Ginebra’s plays leading to a 3-2 series margin, he was at his best anew in the crucial sixth encounter on Wednesday that nearly drew a record crowd of 23,000 at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.
Limited to just four points in the first two quarters, Tenorio tore Meralco’s defenses apart, firing 14 points in the third as Ginebra erased 15-point margins to inch to within 65-66.
In the fourth, Tenorio added seven more points—all unloaded in a smoldering 9-3 Gin attack, his last basket giving Ginebra a 74-73 bubble that keyed a 91-88 title-clinching victory.
But while Tenorio totaled 25 Game 6 points to easily grab Finals MVP honors, Justin Brownlee dished out a performance that strongly dismissed Bolt Allen Durham’s Best Import Award as a fluke.
After Meralco had forged an 84-81 lead at the 3:14 mark, Brownlee tripled and then jumped from a Ginebra Tim Cone timeout for an 86-84 Ginebra bubble.
Meralco coach Norman Black sued for time at 2:20, but Durham traveled and then missed the easiest of lay-ups with the score tied at 88, 5.5 ticks left.
From a Cone-called timeout yet again after Brownlee’s rebound of that ghastly miss by Durham (bothered by muscle pains at the start of play?), Brownlee, receiving the inbound pass from Sol Mercado, would sink the triple of the conference—the finding its mark at the buzzer.
After eight years, Ginebra is champ again.
Bronwnlee was just lucky?
Yes, but don’t we make luck happen?