With locals stepping up, import Rhodes not worried scoring less

RIGHT from the start, San Miguel Beer import Charles Rhodes knows exactly the role he’s going to embrace the moment he joins the reigning three-time Philippine Cup champions.

With a talented local crew that is considered to be the best in the PBA the past three seasons, Mr. Rhodes proved to be a good fit, bringing in the energy, the hustle and the defense up front while getting the best production from the locals.

“I let my locals do that (scoring). I think my game plan was more let my local score and get them involved, instead of me. I’d get more involved on defense,” Mr. Rhodes said.

With Arwind Santos, Alex Cabagnot, Marcio Lassiter, June Mar Fajardo and Chris Ross presiding in offense, Mr. Rhodes concentrated on stopping his counterpart, Joshua Smith.

Mr. Rhodes finished with his least productive output in the PBA, scoring only seven markers. But he pulled down 11 boards while keeping Mr. Smith away from his comfort zone.

Mr. Smith, the burly reinforcement, struggled for only 11 points and could only get six boards while having difficulty extricating from the ganging up defense of the Beermen.

Mr. Rhodes need not to worry about his scoring output as long as the Beermen is winning and he’s confident his talented local crew can get the job done.

“The game plan coming to this game is play SMB basketball,” added Mr. Rhodes. “In Game 1 we didn’t do that and we let them took as out of our rhythm. We just have to continue this every game.”

But while Mr. Rhodes was heaping praise on the starters, he believes the bench players should be given much credit as well.

“We’ve got to give a lot of credit to our bench. Without our bench, we wouldn’t be in a situation now. We’ve been down 17-0 (in Game 2). I was a little bit nervous. Our bench took care of that,” he added.