Stan the Man

Out with the old, in with the new
(Photo credit to the owner)

Poker-faced and steady, he carefully surveys the field to check where his comrades are-- his shooters are busy trying to wriggle free from their defenders, his bigs already engaged in hand-to-hand combat inside the box and angling for proper rebounding position.

In the middle of the chaos of blinding lights, human flesh and glistening jerseys, he makes a split-second decision.

He puts his head down and moves forward, his defender tries to move his legs fast enough to recover. Recover in time to make a possible last gasp attempt at challenging a layup. But what the defender does not know or anticipate, is that while he has already committed to this scenario, the hero has other things in mind. He slows down just as quickly as he accelerated, enough to throw his defender off balance. Enough to catch the help wondering what is going on: "will he shoot? Will he pass? Can I get there in time?" Parallel to the time it took the defender to answer this complex conundrum is the hero scoring or assisting on an easy basket.

This is starting to become somewhat of the norm for GlobalPort Batang Pier’s sophomore point guard Stanley Pringle.

In his maiden season, Pringle averaged 14.5 ppg, 5.9 rpg and 3.9 apg in 29 mpg while obviously deferring to resident Batang Pier star and backcourt buddy Terrence Romeo. This season, he’s playing more minutes which has resulted in a great and significant increase in his overall production and contribution on the floor (his two-game averages are 36mpg, 21.5 ppg, 6 rpg, 4 apg). Another sign that Pringle is ready to have a breakout year is the fact that he no longer looks over his shoulder for Romeo. Coach Pido Jarencio has done a great job of “balancing” the offense between his two young stars, though Romeo has been a bit erratic to start the season.

At first look, Pringle looks worthy of all the “The Next Jayson Castro” hype—actually, he’s even shown to be a lot more mature then the guy he’s supposed to be fortunate enough to be as good as.

You know the times wherein we wanted Castro to takeover games at Talk’n’Text only to have his Kuya Jimmy Alapag bail him out? How long it took for Castro to finally “digest” playing point guard and being a leader on the floor rather than just a scorer?

Well, Pringle actually looks like how Castro is today. Not PCU Castro. Not rookie Castro or even Gilas 2 Castro. But Castro right now. Power game. Blitzing to the cup. Kick out pass for the dribble drive. Pringle even has a go-stop-go (the scenario we explained above) that Castro is still working on (Castro commits to either the drive or kickout, always at full speed. We’ve only seen him speed up into the lane, stop, and go again a few times). Sure, Castro is Castro while Pringle is his own player. We don't mean any disrespect, just that Pringle is definitely for real.

If Romeo keeps this shooting slump of his going, Pringle might just take this team away from him and call it his own.

Guess what they say holds true even for teammates: "to be the Man, you have to beat THE Man."