BY WAYLON GALVEZ
For somebody who owns a record 22 titles in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) spanning three decades, mentor Tim Cone surely had a tough time picking his ‘Top Five’ greatest moments.
There are plenty to choose from out of that many championships Cone had won with three teams.
Cone’s first stop was with Alaska Milk, a team he coached from 1989 to 2011 and steered the franchise to 13 of its current 14 titles, including a Grand Slam feat in 1996.
While the number of titles is expected to soar, so far, Cone has his ‘Top Five’ championship moments. He’s the first one to admit, however, picking – and even ranking one-to-five – “is very hard to narrow down”.
These are his five greatest moments:
First title with Alaska (1991)
“The first was, of course, memorable just because, mostly, it was the first. That was our Bong Alvarez series. It was against Ginebra, which made it doubly exciting, and “Mr. Excitement” himself had the task of guarding the prolific Wes Matthews, who had just recently left the Los Angeles Lakers. Bong, with the help of his friends… er, teammates, shut him (Matthews) down and we won the best-of-five. That was also Sean Chambers’ first championship, as well.”
1ST GRAND SLAM (1996)
“In ‘96, again it was against Ginebra, which again added excitement. We had really reached our peak as a team (after winning the first two conferences). If I recall correctly, we had won something like 13 straight games before Ginebra beat us in Game 4 of the series by one point. We promptly won Game 5 to finish the series and win the championship along with the Grand Slam. That team was a special group led by Johnny (Abarrientos), Jojo (Lastimosa), Bong (Hawkins), Poch (Juinio), Jeff (Caroaso) and of course Sean (Chambers).”
2nd GRAND SLAM (2014)
“San Mig was a different story but no less satisfying. We had struggled through the whole conference trying to win our fourth (straight) conference (title) in a row, as well as the Grand Slam. It was like we were on our last legs, limping to the finish line. In the Finals, we played Yeng Guioa’s Rain or Shine and it went all the way to a Game 5. We pulled it out after both Paul Lee and Jeff Chan missed wide-open three-pointers to take the lead. Not sure how we did it, but we did it. It was just great character from Marc Pingris, James Yap, PJ Simon, Mark Barroca, Joe Devance, Marqus Blakely and the rest.”
WIN OVER TNT
(2012 Commissioner’s Cup)
“Denzel Bowles’ free throws. My first championship and my first year with the Purefoods franchise after leaving Alaska. There was a lot of emotion in that series from myself, and obviously, from Denzel after making those two free throws to go into overtime. No doubt, we benefitted with the foul call (against Ali Peek), but Denzel still had to step up and knock them down (free throws), and we still had to win the game in overtime, along with the championship.”
FIRST TITLE WITH GINEBRA
(2016 Governors’ Cup)
The shot by Justin Brownlee – also, my first championship with Ginebra after leaving Purefoods. Of course, the termination of Ginebra’s 8-year title drought. It seemed that we were all feeling the immense day-to-day pressure of trying to win it for the fans. Also, that series had the “Mark Caguioa and Jayjay Helterbrand” game in which the two of them brought us back from a large deficit in what ended up being the turning point of the series. That was probably my most memorable single game that I had been involved with, and then to win it with “The Shot” – I was so happy for Justin Brownlee.
