Tip of the iceberg for Ginebra

Showtime L.A.

The Barangay Ginebra San Miguel Gin Kings are going to run the competition to the ground.

If tonight's 110-90 massacre of the GlobalPort Batang Pier is to serve as a preview of things to come, then the good Lord almighty have mercy on the souls of whichever team dares face the souped up Kings with reigning Most Valuable Player Mark Caguioa and National team ace point guard L.A. Tenorio leading the charge.

It's bad enough that Caguioa seems like he's in for another solid run after dealing with nagging injuries the previous years, but now teams have to contend with Tenorio-- arguably the most cerebral and efficient court general (not a fan of GIN-eral but okay, whatever), running the show and making life easier for his guys. With the Kings, outside of Caguioa and sophomore guard Allein Maliksi, there are no legit scorers/ creators one-on-one. What the team has in droves however, are a bunch of guys who are highly athletic and skilled enough to finish at the rim. (Kerby Raymundo used to be a solid one-on-one guy, but we're still waiting for him to come back at full strength.)


Another thing that's beautiful/ frightening to watch is the Kings' overall activity be it on offense or defense. Rookie Chris Ellis is a freaking livewire-- the closest I'd compare him to would be having an Arwind Santos body with a Jarred Dillinger "attack/ gigil" mentality. Rico Maierhofer looks to be in shape, and even the usually lucid Billy Mamaril was moving the basketball and ready to receive drop passes (mostly generated by Tenorio).

Ika nga sa tagalog, "tumakbo ka lang at si Tenorio na ang bahala sayo!"

Defensively, the Kings were switching and making up for their lack of a legit big man by having their perimeter guys rotating and closing out. It pays to have lengthy small forwards on the roster and even the old guys like Caguioa, Raymundo, Mamaril, Mike Cortez, Rudy Hatfield and Jayjay Helterbrand looked absolutely thrilled/ energized to be playing on such a young and exciting team.

Did you see Ellis lock up Global Port star Gary David who committed 6 turnovers and shot 1 of 10 from the field to finish with 9 points? NINE POINTS FOR EL GRANADA? WTF. The only time David scored in single digits was with the National team. Other than that, I don't recall a game in the last three years where he looked (or was made to look) damn awful.

Of course, a lot of the Kings' looking so damn good on the court last night was brought about by their opponents' lack of creativity or overall system. Can't wait for this team to face the more disciplined and equally stellar squads such as San Mig Coffee Mixers, Petron Blaze Boosters and Talk 'n' Text Tropang Texters to see if they're really for real.