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| Teams be warned: Do not engage the Bataan Bomber and his Hitmen in a shootfest |
Credit goes to the Tigers' coaching staff for minimizing their weaknesses (absence of Class A floor generals) and maximizing their strengths (shooters). JVee Casio, a point guard only by size and position but not by game, is more scorer than facilitator. And while die-hard fans would quickly point out his assists numbers from time to time, it's more of having deadeye shooters to play with instead of creating scoring opportunities.
Gary David, Kili-Kili Shot's resident Bataan Bomber, is also another player whose negatives are being taken off the spotlight in favor of the positives. We've seen games wherein he'd try to shoot his team back into the fight by putting up back to back to back three balls even when it's not going in.
Do we hear his team complaining or commentators calling him out? No.
Because the Tigers' frenetic pace allows the action to quicken therefor making you forget that just a play ago, David air balled a shot or was responsible for the violent murder of a hapless tailed wall-crawler. Ditto with Casio and even Marcio Lassiter.
Another Tigers' weakness that is being covered for by their high octane offense is their lack of overall defensive discipline.
Undisciplined teams (or those given too much free rein by coaches) often fall into the Tigers' trap of trying to outpoint the opposition and pushing the pace at an insane, Mike D'Antoni level. The Tigers of course, enjoy the upper hand in such scenarios because while the other team would settle for a quick two, they have guys who have enough credibility to hoist quick threes and live to tell about it.
This is the very same tactic used by NBA coaches such as Greg Popovich and Phil Jackson when their teams face wildcards such as the Golden State Warriors, Phoenix Suns of years passed and in some ways, the pre-2011 Dallas Mavericks.
Their teams are not caught into the allure of a high scoring game and they send out their guards to control the tempo at all times. Emphasis is placed in their post players to further grind away on the shotclock and keep possessions at a minimum.
This isn't rocket science or anything new, Jackson and Popovich didn't create this coaching scheme. So it's quite surprising that old reliables such as B-Meg's Tim Cone and now, Rain or Shine's Yeng Guiao, allows this to continue.
Had Cone been with the Llamados long enough, he'd surely have more control of his team (who probably felt that they had enough firepower to outgun the Tigers, not realizing that they had scorers instead of shooters).
Guiao? We'd be silly to think that he hasn't thought of this (RoS displayed the ball control we've been looking for the whole series in Game 6), but the way he coaches his players- by letting them loose on the floor and making themselves accountable that's the only reason why the Tigers are still in the fight and could very well be looking at their first Finals appearance under the Perasol-led RUN David-Marcio-Casio era.
