Brief break for Bay Area

MANILA, Philippines — The Bay Area Dragons will take an eight-day break after closing out their first-ever competition with a runner-up finish in the PBA Commissioner’s Cup last Sunday then return to the Kerry Sports Gym in Shangri-La The Fort, BGC, to prepare for the eight-team East Asia Super League (EASL) Champions Week set March 1 to 5 in Japan.

Dragons coach Brian Goorjian said the experience from participating in the PBA will go a long way in toughening up the team for future jousts. “I’m staying in Manila,” he said. “But I know guys are taking off to rest in different resort places like Bali. No one’s going home. There’s still work to be done.”

The EASL Champions Week will be the league’s fifth event after four preseason tournaments that were held in 2017, 2018 and 2019 before the pandemic struck. EASL will launch its home-and-away inaugural season in October. Bay Area opens its Champions Week schedule against the Seoul SK Knights on March 2 then faces the Utsonomiya Brex the next day, both in Utsonomiya, about 100 kilometers north of Tokyo. The playoffs for third place and the title will be staged on March 5 in Okinawa. San Miguel Beer and TNT will represent the PBA in Champions Week as the top two finishers of this season’s Philippine Cup.

Bay Area will train with the visiting Shantou University varsity at the Kerry Sports Gym to gird for Champions Week. The Shantou delegation, led by coach Evan Gordon, will arrive here on Thursday. Gordon is Houston Rockets guard Eric’s brother and played for Arizona State and Indiana in D1. Shantou is a top-level team in the China University Basketball Association. Goorjian said the Dragons will leave Manila for Japan on Feb. 28.

Regarding Game 7 of the PBA Commissioner’s Cup Finals, Goorjian said the crowd and unfamiliarity with the rims in the Philippine Area had nothing to do with the Dragons’ performance. “Our team is young,” he said. “We learned that to be better, we’ve got to play at the level as guys like (Justin) Brownlee and (Scottie) Thompson. It was a great experience for Bay Area and an honor to play in the PBA. We couldn’t control the things we had control of like rebounding, doing proper defense and playing through the physicality. I wish we could’ve played better for the fans.”