Another day, another L for Batang Pier

Tough luck for Sol
and his "Most Improved" campaign

When was the last time the pre-Commissioner's Cup favourites GlobalPort Batang Pier won a game?

That was on February 15, a masterful 89-80 victory over the then still clueless Barangay Ginebra San Miguel led by an even more clueless Herbert Hill. After that, the Batang Pier would go on one of the ugliest, nay, horrendous losing streaks in all of Philippine basketball by dropping all 11 of their next assignments mostly in blowout fashion.

Weren't they supposed to be the dark horses? Actually, with the souped-up line-up featuring Gary David, 2x PBA MVP Willie Miller, Japeth Aguilar and Sol Mercado plus promising rookies Jason Deutchman and AJ Mandani and a solid bench-- they were more than just dark horses. Hell, they were playoff picks by just about every one who knows their basketball.


Alas, things didn't go according to plan. It started with the decision to drop defensive minded import Justin Williams because "he wasn't scoring much." We've argued time and again that a line-up with David, Miller and Mercado as starters don't need a big man to be dominating the basketball. This isn't 2k13. We're not playing on some sort of Fantasy League (although, with the team's showing and management's recent decision-making you could make an argument that they're probably run by Fantasy owners who couldn't tell the difference between reel and real basketball). If you have a bunch of scorers on the wings, the best bet is to have an anchor defensively covering for their expected blown defensive assignments.

David's defense is non-existent. Miller has never, EVER, bothered playing that side of the court and Mercado is pretty much exhausting whatever energy he has on offense already so it's really big to have a center or power forward patrolling the paint to provide the defensive stop.

Those three, plus Aguilar don't exactly spell Defensive Team of the Conference.

So Williams was sent home, a new import came in, no changes were really made in the system as David would still end up as the team's leading scorer and well, they couldn't play good enough defense to make games competitive.

They can score with the best, yes, but this isn't the D-League. This is the PBA and the teams that can play defense almost, always wins big.

Perhaps it's time to admit that Coach Junel Baculi's old school approach to the game has run its course. They tried to put in some of the "dribble drive" system in their offense, but failed miserably as Coach Baculi was unable to make the necessary in-game adjustments when defenses would clamp down on his slashing guards (usually Mercado).

There was also the huge drop-off in consisteny, as Coach Baculi would always go with his best offensive players to start the game. His second unit would fail to equal that, and that's pretty much where opponents takeover the box score and start creating separation to win.

Our only concern here is that David is already in his mid-30s, we don't want his "prime" years wasted on such a poorly coached team. Honestly, it's time to mix it up and start fresh with Mercado, Mandani, Deutchman and Aguilar moving forward.

Hey, those young guys are technically still the "MMDA."