Coaching Carousel: Team MVP Edition (Part 1: Black to Meralco)

For the Meralco Bolts and reportedly soon-to-be former head coach Ryan Gregorio, it was a hard four years.

They inherited a once proud Santa Lucia Realty franchise that saw it's two young stars, Ryan Reyes and Kelly Williams, shipped to their older brother Talk 'n' Text. A couple of promising talents (Joseph Yeo, Denok Miranda) were also sent elsewhere. So, to fill the void, the Bolts opted to bring in Mac Cardona as their franchise player to team up with the likes of aging bigs Marlou Aquino and pre-Team Ageless Asi Taulava.

It was rough. Cardona was dumped, another exiled Texter in Jared Dillinger was brought in and more trades were made to help the Bolts' campaign. This season, the team fielded in a not too shabby starting or best five of Mike Cortez, Gary David, Jarred Dillinger, Reynel Hugnatan and Rabeh Al Husseini.

That's actually not a bad five, with Danny Ildefonso and Cliff Hodge coming off the bench.
But then Cortez got hurt. David kept misfiring. Al Husseini suddenly remembered he was half-something and could play for a national team elsewhere thus the AWOL drama.

So out goes Gregorio and in comes-- hey, another exiled Texter- Norman Black.

Black tried to install his traditional, old school basketball sets to the Texters who were long established as a small ball team under now Gilas Pilipinas head coach Chot Reyes. The team made up for its flaws (such as not having a traditional center or a legit one-on-one shot creator other than Jayson Castro which isn't enough these days in the PBA) by moving the ball around and just switching it up at all times.

Well, Black sure as hell did a great job in crushing that. Opting to stick guys in their natural positions instead of going for more creative units and forcing his old reliable Nonoy Baclao down Texters' fans' throats.

With the Bolts however, Black is tailor made for the current personnel. Traditional, heady point guard? Check. Big time scorer? Check. Do it all wing? Check. Blue collar power forward? Check.

Center? We'll get back to you on that one.

Now it's all about developing the bench for Black, looking for guys to come in and be relied upon when the starters are tired or get hurt. This area was what did the Bolts in last season. Gregorio rode his stars so much that when Cortez went out, everything seemed to go downhill with no solid backup point guard to facilitate.

Hopefully, he doesn't exclusively go after Ateneans and Bedans. Leave that to NLEX.