Lassiter, David ambush Petron in Legazpi

Pinoy Jordan, Pippen and a pocket-sized Toni Kukoc

The way things are going, the Chicago Bu, erm, Powerade Tigers are on their way to another impressive run this Commissioner's Cup behind the torrid shooting of KKS Bataan Bomber and super rookie Marcio Lassiter. In last night's game, the Tigers pretty much caught the Petron Boosters with their pants down and just slaughtered them from one end of the Legazpi City basketball court to the other.

With Tigers' import Dwayne Jones proving to be too much for counterpart finesse big man Nick Fazekas, David and Lassiter pretty much cherry-picked their way to open and uncontested jumpers finishing with 25 and 23, with Lassiter adding 11 boards on plenty of weak-side rebounding.


See? It's performances such as this that has made any and all trade negotiations seem unfounded and stupid at this point. There has been no reported chemistry issues within the Tigers' camp, no rumors of coach-player disagreements that couldn't be hashed out within the confines of team practices and definitely no dip in any of the concerned players' performances whatsoever.

Credit should be given to the Tigers' conditioning team (hey, they're an actual energy boosting drink that's sold in the market-unlike Barako Bull Energy- so that answers any and all concerns about that) and to its solid coaching staff.

While this writer will continue to belittle coach Bo Perasol's skills as a PBA-level coach, we'll concede that the other guys on the Tigers' bench namely Alex Compton and even Charles Tiu are bringing a lot to the table. They play wild and free and always to their strengths which is to engage and dare teams in an all out offensive showdown. Hard to beat a team with two of the league's deadliest snipers (Casio, David) and a guy who can pretty much be relied upon to do it all on the court (Lassiter). Having Jones also helps spread the floor even more because though he isn't as dominant as traditional centers are, he gets the job done and is an improvement from their options last conference (Doug Kramer, Rommel Adducul and Alex Crisano all of which have moved to the power forward spot).

Question now is, can they keep this pace up until the semis and even, if ever, the Finals? How will Gary David's mid 30 year old knees hold up given the way they play up and down the floor? Will teams ever not try to engage this team in a shootout and slow the game down?

One thing's for sure though, the Tigers are pretty damn good to watch.