Tempered expectations

(Photo credit to the owner)

When Tropang TNT rookie forward Moala Tautuaa was picked 1st overall in this year's PBA Draft, expectations were high because of his size, lineage and pedigree. After all, we are talking about a 6"7 beast of a man who could easily be playing a more contact sport such as American football or even pro-wrestling.

The full-on beard just added to the intimidating exterior.

Unfortunately, a lot of TNT fans have been disappointed so far with Tautuaa's performance despite a respectable 21mpg 12ppg 4rpg 2apg batting average. But is Tautuaa really underperforming? Or is he just caught in a roster that is loaded with top-notch forwards, including 2nd overall pick Troy Rosario?

We would argue that it is a little of both.

Tautuaa has failed to really impress us so far primarily because he seems to be more comfortable with a (raw) face-up style on offense. He doesn't have the best handles, so he only succeeds versus slow-handed and slow-footed rivals when trying to attack via the dribble. That being said, with the PBA's new "no armbar" rule, wouldn't it be wiser if Tautuaa simply worked on his post up game and backed his defenders down? He has the upper body for it, so there is hope.

But more than offense, it is Tautuaa's rather "soft" approach in playing defense as well as crashing the boards that we find truly alarming. He doesn't fight for it like a runt. He simply grabs what he can but does not really fight for what he cannot. Veteran forwards Harvey Carey, Ranidel de Ocampo, Kelly Williams and even fellow rookie Rosario crash the boards harder than the Fil-Tonggan.

And there lies the other problem.

There are just too many power forwards in TNT's rotation for Tautuaa to be given the greenlight to develop fully.

It has become so congested, that Carey often finds himself sliding all the way down to small forward (a first in his decade or so- long career) while Tautuaa would slide up to the center spot (in the Philippine Cup tourney anyway since teams are reinforced from here on out).

This is unlike TNT head coach Jong Uichico's old ward and former Number 1 overall pick, Danny Ildefonso, who basically played the starting center/power forward position for San Miguel from his rookie year onwards, giving him enough time to develop and learn from his mistakes (under Ron Jacobs and later Uichico).

Speaking of which, we wish that Coach Jong would pull a few strings and have Ildefonso work with Tautuaa, if de Ocampo hasn't already, just so the young big man could learn the intricacies of playing in the paint. It would actually do both him and TNT good moving forward.

Also, it would do Gilas a lot of good since Tautuaa appears to be the contingency plan should a naturalized center (currently Andray Blatche) be unavailable for pocket tournaments.