The PBA's Shaq vs Kobe

Age and injuries made Kerby
expendable at BMeg

To be the Man, you have to beat THE Man.

Or have the entire management back your claim, be on your prime, put up solid-not-great numbers, keep quiet and let the dice fall where they may.

From an entirely conspiracy theorist point of view, those claims could very well be used to illustrate what happened among Kerby Raymundo, James Yap and the B-Meg Llamados franchise as a whole.



It’s the same old song, similar to Shaq and Kobe but minus the trash talking and TV drama. Kerby was getting old, but as long as he was around B-Meg would always be his team given his stature in the world of Philippine basketball. Yap is the two time Most Valuable Player awardee, but his entire career has been rued with question marks and unwanted/wanted showbiz fanfare.

That’s why you’ll always hear talks about how teammate PJ Simon or even Roger Yap are the better, more clutch guards in the Llamados’ fold. Kerby? No one will ever question his hierarchy in the frontline. Not when Rico Villanueva was there, not Marc Pingris or even Joe DeVance.

Someone had to go it seemed, and that was the more senior Kerby who technically isn’t a Llamados “original” (drafted by Red Bull a decade and so ago). And "go" he did, being traded to his "dream team" Barangay Ginebra Kings.

Tama ba na inalis lahat
ng "matanda" para kay Yap?

Yap on the other hand is on the cusp of his prime. The tools are there, the physical attributes, the shooting form and defense—all he needed was someone to keep him on the straights. That’s what the Llamados’ brass did by acquiring coach Tim Cone. To build the team around Yap, to squeeze the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious talent slightly buried underneath all the handsome exterior packaging he has been blessed with.

When the two teams face off, Yap will be expected to carry the fight even more for the Llamados against a Mark Caguioa-less Kings. He'll probably have a season high 25 or more in one of the Best of Five games, somehow this writer doubts that Cone will be content with Yap ONLY playing defense and grabbing rebounds. That's not what you want from your franchise player in a five game series with a Finals appearance on the line now.

Kerby?

That's going to be a tough one.

He won't be asked to score much, because of the logjam it seems on the forward position with Villanueva, Willy Wilson, Rudy Hatfield, Nino Canaleta, Dylan Ababou all ready to go.

But we'd be damned to think that Kerby's not going into the series without fire in his eyes.

So who're you pulling for? Shaq (Kerby) or Kobe (Yap)?