Jayson Castro: Quicker than your average

Catch the Blur if you can

In a country critical of its basketball stars, one can't help but ask where the Talk 'n' Text Tropang Texters' combo guard Jayson Castro ranks as far as being one of the brighter names in the league is concerned.

Currently at the forefront of TNT's Philippine Cup campaign where they rank first with an 8-1 win-loss record, Castro norms an impressive 15 points, 5 rebounds, 5 assists stat line in 33 effective yet fast-paced minutes. While asked to play point guard, Castro's game overlaps to the SG position given his scoring prowess which has vastly improved from his PCU days and when he was drafted into the league by TNT in 2008.

Learning by playing with the best

Back then, Castro was just another crazy, ultra athletic speedster who runs his opponents off the hardcourt with little to no basketball discipline. Not that he wasn't a great player back then, but he was more "And 1" than calculated. That all changed under coach Chot Reyes and playing behind/ beside guys like Jimmy Alapag and now Ryan Reyes-- two of the league's premier guards who share floor time with Castro.

With Alapag, Castro is given the chance to concentrate on scoring the ball and works off it to the hilt with daredevil drives owing to his rare combination of speed, size, strength and heart. These drives allows him the luxury of throwing kick-out passes to knockdown shooters Alapag and Larry Fonacier.

And when paired with the burly Reyes, Castro slides to PG where he is hands down TNT's biggest threat having the ball almost exclusively in his hands and setting himself up early. Still, you have to hand it to Castro for NOT pulling an Iverson and being mindful to look for his teammates with normal outputs of 7, 8 or 9 assists per game.

International caliber?

Only a complete noob would argue that Castro is not elite-level really with the greatest or prime example of his abilities being put on display against arguably the world's best point guard today, the NBA's New Orleans' Chris Paul. Twice Castro ripped Paul clean in the SMART All Star Game a few months back, one was more of Paul trying to be too fancy-- and the other, a clean rip by all standards.

You can say that we're overplaying those steals a little bit, but Mark Barroca, L.A. Tenorio, Sol Mercado all had their turns versus the NBAers and no one saw them stealing the ball off anybody.

That being said, hell yeah Castro can score. Another hell yeah goes to him playing solid to good defense on other guards given his overall physique.

And the nice thing about Castro? He can knockdown threes and jumpers with consistency these days too.

If Castro continues his impressive streak and further adds to his now growing resume, then there's no doubt that he's just a title-runs away from being widely recognized as the best damn guard today (point guard or otherwise) just as the NBA and its fans/ media did with Chicago's Derrick Rose (who is probably one of Castro's current NBA influences).