FOR winning the KFC-PBA Philippine Cup on Wednesday, Purefoods can now be considered a great team?
I’ll say yes to that.
Five reasons:
One, third-ranked Purefoods won three straight games to post a 4-2 triumph over No. 2 seed San Miguel Beer in the semifinals.
Two, Purefoods next won four straight in a stunning sweet sweep of No. 1 seed Alaska to prevail in the PBA Finals.
Three, Purefoods became the first team to win seven straight games en route to clinching a title in the 35-year history of the PBA.
Four, Purefoods, after a mere two-day rest following its grueling six-game semifinal conquest of SMB, was the most “unrested” team ever to win a PBA crown.
Five, Purefoods’ fifth All-Filipino title tied the record set by the now-defunct Crispa for the most-won PBA plums in a no-import conference.
For its sheer brilliance, the feat framed neatly by Purefoods coach Ryan Gregorio earned a niche in PBA lore.
It came at a time when most pundits least expected it.
It came in a precarious moment when Purefoods’s finals foe was, admittedly, the heavy favorite – a usual.
You see, under coach Tim Cone, who was the third Grand Slam coach in 1996, Alaska became a byword in basketball.
No team before Purefoods had ever done such tectonic thrashing on Alaska, the Team of the Decade in the Nineties.
Thus, Purefoods blowing Alaska away in four games in a best-of-7 affair was like seeing David Diaz knocking Manny Pacquiao out in the first minute of the first round of a scheduled 12-rounder.
It was not a mere upset Purefoods had just recorded. It was an upset of monumental proportions, as in a quake surpassing the magnitude of both the recent killer quakes combined in Haiti and Chile.
If Purefoods proceeds to win the second conference to sweep the season, will you be surprised?
Not me.
With not just one but two Yaps (James and Roger) present in the Purefoods lineup, plus a backstopping bunch that had stricken the word surrender out of the dictionary, Gregorio might just do it.
Immaterial it might even be once an import is finally put in place.
With Gregorio at the helm, guns-for-hire are mere incidentals. Gravy!