Grind-it-out Basketball for Black, Texters

Offense wins games,
defense wins championships

Six undefeated games in and we are seeing newly appointed Talk 'n' Text Tropang Texters' head coach Norman Black's imprints on a team that has been winning so much the last two-three years. This isn't the same Texters squad that would simply run right through the competition with their high-octane offense solely dependent on their uber-talented roster. This is a team that is learning the beauty of ugly "70-75 points endgame score" basketball.

While former head coach Chot Reyes has led this team to several Finals appearances and titles behind the aforementioned scheme with a defense that was just as okay, Black's version of the Texters is just scarier-- if you could even call it that since we don't know of any team last season and the one before that would openly say that they'd like to face the Texters in a seven-game title series.

Last night versus the Rain or Shine Elastopainters showed just how good this team was defensively. Jeffrei Chan was a marked man right from the get go. They sent Ryan Reyes on him, followed by Larry Fonacier then Jarred Dillinger. A second defender, usually a big, would always come in from the weak side to block Chan's view and prevent the kick-out pass. There's a reason why the league's leading scorer, Chan, finished with only 4 points. And that wasn't because he had an off night-- the Texters simply made him irrelevant.

And while that was going on, the three guys who were left to their posts while say, Reyes and Kelly Williams/ Ranidel de Ocampo were busy bottling up Chan, would concentrate on protecting the painted area. They knew that the E-Painters didn't have a lot after Chan, and while Jervy Cruz had his moments, it wasn't something that was truly game changing as what Cruz contributed on offense, he gave up on defense being shorter than Williams and de Ocampo.

The Texters didn't have star guard Jayson Castro, a truly great player who is being just as accident/ injury prone as another future Hall of Famer Danny Seigle, and former PBA MVP Jimmy Alapag was playing like an old man with even older legs. But their defense carried them through, the game was tight, guys couldn't score inside and it was all by design.

The only thing we're concerned about, in today's exciting, high-scoring PBA, the Texters might lose fans with their grind it out style-- not that they have a lot that we know of anyway (sorry, just the truth right there. Why they're not as universally loved given Alapag, Castro and RDO, we don't know for sure. Or maybe because a good 70% of their team never really played competitive amateur ball here and starred here before going into the PBA).

P.S.

And Castro better watch his back, or else Larry Fonacier is going to make this HIS team. Have you seen Larry play lately? Superb.