ABL Finals: Battle of the Pinoy PG Future

Pag sumali to sa PBA, mababawasan
ang female fans ni James Yap 

We're just minutes away from the ABL Best-of-Three Finals match-up between the Philippines' San Miguel Beermen and the Indonesia Warriors and it's quite nice to see the ASEAN league continuing to blossom in terms of reach, popularity and quality of games.

The  last two seasons, teams were vying for not only the best available imports, but for Filipino players to beef up their roster. This season, some teams opted to stick with mostly natural players and actually did quite well before retooling mid-conference (as anyone who's looking to improve should, regardless of nationality).


For the San Miguel Beermen, they did the most remodeling midway through their inaugural season-- adding PBA veterans Roger Yap, John Ferriols to add to an already formidable PBA Team B squad. That, plus they replaced ineffective imports with NBA veteran Nick Fazekas and the explosive Duke Crews.

Along the way, Leo Avenido established himself as the "JJ Helterbrand of the ABL" with his stellar point guard skills and clutch scoring. Chris Banchero, who is now fast emerging as the big PG of the future in terms of Philippine basketball, is opening a lot of eyes not only with his showbiz-worthy good looks, but also his heady game which has a little John Stockton in it-- not too quick or flashy, but just damn effective.

A quick look into Banchero's stats shows that this guy is averaging a solid 13-2-5 statline (points-rebounds-assists) while logging 25-30 minutes a game.

Then there's the Indonesia Warriors bannered by a local-heavy line-up with imports Evan Brock and Steve Thomas. They picked up solid amateurs such as Allan Salansang, Jerick Canada and Rony Gunawan-- but none more impressive than Fil-Am guard Stanley Pringle.

Pringle is everything that Banchero isn't-- flashy, cat quick crossovers and elite athleticism. Averaging a cool 17-5-6 statline, you could say that Pringle is a little better than Banchero-- but that's only because Pringle is expected to carry the Warriors' perimeter game while Banchero defers to star Avenido.

Obviously, we're pulling for the team that's carrying the Filipino flag but it's hard to root against either Banchero or Pringle. Both bring different styles to the game and the Finals should be interesting to watch.

Should these two jump to the PBA, it would be interesting to see if Team SMC or MVP makes a play for one (or both).