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| Pampanga's, no, the PBA's BEST. (Photo courtesy of Sports5) |
To be quite frank, we were simply left in awe about how the Best-of-Seven series (which went the full distance) captured the magic of true Filipino basketball. Nothing fancy, no shootouts or one team trying to showboat over the other, but just quality, grind-it-out, matira matibay basketball. What was first being sold as a "vintage" match-up between two of the most dominant teams in the mid 1990s, quickly became a series of its own with the Aces' inspiring run to the top behind a battlecry that preaches #wenotme and the Beermen's quest to quash any #larongmayaman tags and to exorcise whatever demons and drama it has had to deal with the last two or three years.
For the champions, the Beermen, Arwind Santos stood tall when his young fellow PBA MVP Junemar Fajardo was under attack. He set the tone early in the series by not letting the Aces' and its star Calvin Abueva get into any of his teammates' heads by way of physicality. Santos let his game do the talking, even when he wasn't exactly taking the lead role on offense. He battled like the Arwind Santos of old. He was probably pushed into going back to his old self by the challenge that is the young Abueva. We were all reminded, in a span of seven games, why every one thought of Santos as a one of a kind talent in the whole Philippine basketball world. At the same breath, we were also left to rue what could have been, had this Santos showed up the previous years, and maybe joined Gilas Pilipinas as arguably the best and most versatile wing/high post defender in the land.
