The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

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ang dasal ko na mabalik sa contender

What a day it has been for local professional basketball-- while it may not look like much, anytime you can get five teams to agree on a deal that would have ten guys changing uniforms no matter their status in the league, this "mega deal" could prove to help balance a top heavy PBA come next conference.

To summarize, here are the guys who were part of the trade and where they have landed:

Ronald Tubid: Petron Blaze Boosters
Mac Baracael: Barangay Ginebra San Miguel
Aldrech Ramos: Alaska Aces
Alex Mallari, Leo Najorda and Lester Alvarez: San Mig Coffee
JC Intal, Jonas Villanueva, Allein Maliksi and Jojo Duncil: Barako Bull Energy

Now to help keep things interesting (and give us entries to have fun with while waiting for the Commissioner's Cup to start), we will split the entries into three parts. Since San Mig Coffee and Barako Bull got the most players out of the deal, it is only just that we give those teams separate entries all to themselves.


Tubid to Petron
From a prized and pivotal two-way player who had a hard time adjusting as the "go-to-guy" with the Energy, Ronald Tubid once again finds himself playing in a stacked Petron line-up. He has openly gone on record to say that he will try and provide the hustle and energy for the under-achieving team and give them that much needed "glue guy." At first glance, you'd have to wonder where Tubid fits and how he'll get his minutes since the team already has Chris Lutz and Joseph Yeo alternating at the two spot and then there's Marcio Lassiter, Arwind Santos and Jay Washington manning the wings. In this import-laden conference, it will only get tougher since the import (NBA veteran Ronaldo Balkman) will eat up the bulk of the minutes at the PF/C positions forcing everyone to slide down.

If you're a Petron fan, you've got to love this deal since it gives the team some character. We all know how Tubid is, and how hard he fights (and flops) night in and night out. But from a basketball perspective, this deal doesn't really make a lot of sense outside of the intangibles that Tubid may or may not be able to bring since they already have guards for the future in Lutz, Yeo and Lassiter. A better or more logical off season strategy is probably to find a solid point guard who can distribute, play defense AND shoot (more on this in the Barako Bull post).

Ramos to Alaska

3 teams in a conference and change. Wow.

The guy that many believe will turn out to be the 2nd coming of Ginebra's Raymundo will get a fresh new start playing for a team that has a very lean (and undersized) forward position. That pretty much assures him of a shot at playing time and to be part of the active rotation for the Aces under coach Luigi Trillo. The jury's still out on this kid since he is a rookie (though he has looked solid at times) but there's just too much hype around Ramos since his FEU and ABL days that you can't help but expect more. The jumpers are nice, but he needs to either move quicker side-to-side and learn to dribble in traffic or develop into a hustling, scrappy player ala ex-teammate Marc Pingris. Just a couple of things that Ramos needs to work on if he wants to stay in the PBA.

Baracael to Ginebra
What is up with the San Miguel brass and their penchant for making moves for household names chemistry be damned? Here they go again, getting Mac Baracael-- a stretch power forward who is very inconsistent to add to a team that already boasts of hustle 3s and 4s such as Chris Ellis, Keith Jensen, Willy Wilson, Rudy Hatfield, Kerby Raymundo (not that Kerby's a wing, but he is just as mobile as these guys but with a more polished back-to-the-basket game) and even Rico Maierhofer (oh, and Dylan Ababou is also on the roster, he's just out with an injury). What you like about Baracael is that on a good day, he is fearless, slashes to the rim, can hit jumpers and plays aggressive defense. On a bad day? He tends to drift away from plays and take defensive assignments off in lieu of running back on offense early to look for his shots. While Baracael has that look and feel of a throwback Ginebra player, we just don't see this working out for him anytime soon unless Ginebra does some more unloading, nay, unclogging, of the wing position.

Of the three, right now you could argue that Alaska won based on two things: they were able to add a legit 6"7 forward to the line-up who can shoot jumpers and run the floor AND they also got rid of inconsistent Baracael to free up more minutes for Abueva to lay claim to the small forward position moving forward in his PBA career.