Ginebra: From drought to dynasty?

MANILA, Philippines - The thirst for a PBA championship has been quenched. But Barangay Ginebra’s winning the Governors Cup crown only made the crowd favorites hungrier.

In fact, the Gin Kings want to join the elite circle of multi-winners the Crispa Redmanizers, the Toyota Tamaraws, the Great Taste Coffee Makers, the Alaska Milk Aces, the San Mig Coffee Mixers and the TNT Texters and put up their own dynastic PBA reign.

Ginebra ended an eight-year long wait Wednesday night, beating Meralco, 91-88, in Game 6 on Justin Brownlee’s amazing buzzer-beating three-pointer at the Smart Araneta Coliseum in a feat that could easily go down as one of the league’s most thrilling title clinchers.

So the Kings reigned again, securing a first crown since their 2008 PBA Fiesta Conference conquest and coach Tim Cone and his troops now hope Ginebra’s victory will spark a long glorious ride as a dominant team.

With this thing in mind, Cone wants to keep all the pieces of his victory jigsaw for the next battle, including 40-year-old Jayjay Helterbrand.

“Jay was telling me he learned a lot from me. In my mind, it’s retirement speech, and I told Jay we’ve got a lot more to win,” said Cone shortly after winning the crown.

“We’ll try to get to the level got into by teams like TNT and Purefoods. We want to get that level. We want to work for that. This is our first championship, not the only championship. We’re gonna go out and win another one,” Cone added.

“We’re not into winning ‘a’ championship. We want to win many. That’s our challenge. We had growth from this one. Japeth (Aguilar) learned a lot. The guys learned a lot. We want to grow more as a team,” Cone also said.

Cone has achieved that with Alaska Milk and San Mig Coffee (Star), teams the brilliant American coach had steered to dominant runs, accounting for his 18 previous championships in the league.

There’s high hopes the Kings can do that especially if Greg Slaughter can quickly recover from his ACL surgery and Ginebra gets good additional materials from the coming draft.

Cone has a solid, competitive bunch in his current lineup to whom he put all the credit in their Governors Cup championship.

“I’ve really got great players,” said Cone making special mention, though, of Helterbrand and Mark Caguioa whom he considered the biggest catalysts in their amazing ride.

Brownlee delivered the series’ clincher, LA Tenorio bagged the Finals MVP award, Sol Mercado and Aguilar had their moments in the series. But Cone insisted Helterbrand and Caguioa, though no longer the Fast and Furious of old, were key factors in their storybook triumph.

“Jay and Mark, they saved us the whole series. Honestly, they’re series savers. They played with such intensity, desire and hunger that rubbed off on everybody,” said Cone.

“Jay is normally quiet. But at the bench, he’s always yelling and screaming. He came to practice talking to everybody. They’re amazing. They’re absolutely amazing,” Cone also said.

“In times when it looked we’re ready to give up, they didn’t let it happen. They honestly wouldn’t let it happen,” Cone added. “They saved Game Four. Without Game Four, we wouldn’t be here. The series would have been probably finished at five (games).”

The Kings blew a 16-point first-half lead and when the game looked like slipping away, Helterbrand and Caguioa came out and rallied the team back into the game.

In a brief 10-minute outing on his 40th birthday, Helterbrand put up a performance to remember, knocking in 11 points on a perfect 4-of-4 shooting, with the last – a booming trey – breaking a 76-all standoff entering the last five minutes of play.

Then, Brownlee, Scottie Thompson and Joe Devance took over as the Kings stayed in the lead to the finish, squeezing through to tie the series at 2-2.

The Helterbrand-Caguioa pair was also at it in Game Six.

It’s no surprising that the two were the most determined souls in the Ginebra team, being the two players who agonized all through those eight years that the Gin Kings were in limbo. They were the only remnants of the last Ginebra champion team.

They went through a drought spanning 14 tournaments marked by lots of heartaches and heartbreaks.

 Cone said Helterbrand and Caguioa gave them huge emotional lift.

“We had that big run with Jay and Mark. A coach couldn’t do anything about that. It’s total emotion,” said Cone.

“I wish I could speak technically about basketball. But it’s not really technical. It’s an emotional rollercoaster with big highs and big lows,” Cone added.

That ended Ginebra’s long title drought. Now, the Kings seek a long reign – a dynasty.