Lee 1, Mercado 0

While this afternoon's 139-95 massacre of the Meralco Bolts courtesy of the Rain or Shine Elasto-Painters should be credited to the entire RoS roster and their ridiculous three point shooting, this writer chooses to ignore all of the semantics (as others are sure to write about it on tomorrow's dailies-- kudos to Ronjay Buenafe who needs a monicker of his own, I like "The Microwave" as suggested by Jason Webb) and get right down to business.

Paul Lee VS Sol Mercado.

In case you've been spending the past couple of weeks under a rock, the flashy and bull-strong Meralco combo guard made a controversial post on Twitter that didn't sit well with fans of the up and coming super rookie from Rain or Shine. This ultimately divided the Pinoy basketball world, with this writer slightly favoring Lee for his overall game (and 100% Filipino lineage).

LeBron James-like: kamikaze drives
and deep threes for Mercado

Given the controversial subplot, this afternoon's game was definitely pencilled in by fans as the start of what could be a beautiful rivalry between the two players. This is the Mark Caguioa VS Sol Mercado match-up that never materialized (as Caguioa spent most of the season hurting during Mercado's rookie year) and thankfully, both guys were pitted against each other right from the get go.

And while we're still waiting for our friends from reliable stats site http://www.pba-online.net it doesn't take a rocket scientist to say that Lee definitely outshone Mercado.

The RoS defense was bent on denying Mercado his favored driving lane (from the top of the arc) and it also didn't help that the "Sol Train" was struggling with his deep threes. Of the few times when Lee guarded Mercado, there was always a help defender waiting to cut the Meralco hotshot's path.

Note to Mercado: much like people call out LeBron James for not having a pet post-up move, Mercado needs to develop his off-the-ball game and maybe take a jumpshot or two just to mix things up and keep his defenders guessing. At this rate, all teams have to do is throw a 2nd defender at him whenever he cuts and he's bound to jack up a three or throw the ball away. Again, I'm not saying Mercado's not good, because he damn well is, but there's always room to grow as a player.

On the other end, the Bolts wasn't able to concentrate their defense on Lee owing to the RoS players' hot shooting from just about everywhere. Every time they tried to double on Lee, the ball would be rotated and an open three pointer would be scored by just about everyone from Lee, Jeff Chan to Beau Belga and JR Quinahan.

Anong sinabi niya sa laro ko? O etong kanya.

There were times however, when Mercado would pick up Lee early and the rookie would force the issue by driving to open lanes (caused by again, RoS' hot shooting from deep). On one sequence, Lee drove against Mercado and used his exceptional skill and poise to protect the basketball (with kanto wisdom of having his elbows wide out) before laying it up. Nothing fancy, just old school Pinoy streetball. None of the pretty crossovers, kamikaze drives and Derrick Rose-like "bahala na si Batman" circus shots, just going hard to the basket and finishing like a grown ass man. Oh, and his teammates made him look good whenever his drives went nowhere by burying kick out threes.

Lee downplaying the match-up during the halftime interview was expected of the "too cool for school" rookie, but there's no denying that the O.G. was bent on proving a point whenever he was on the floor. No need to lie homeboy, we see you.

And since there's no point in calling for a Meralco-Rain or Shine rivalry anytime soon (unless they meet in the Finals and add more fuel to the fire), let's just give this one to Lee and wait for Mercado's comeback the next time around.