Despite win, Cone still sees Ginebra-Meralco finals going to a Game 7

BARANGAY Ginebra coach Tim Cone is the least surprised to see Game One against Meralco go down to the wire on Tuesday night.

He expects each game in the PBA Governors' Cup Finals to be no different.

The Gin Kings didn't escape with a 91-87 victory over Meralco until big man Japeth Aguilar swatted Meralco import Allen Durham drive in the endgame to set the stage for Justine

Brownlee's insurance free throws.

Cone said that if Ginebra wants to win the crown for the third time in four years, the Kings will have to go through the grinder in each and every game.

“I honestly feel this is the way it’s going to be every game. It’s going to be a grind-it-out, fight to the end and see who comes out on top in the last couple of minutes,” said the two-time grand slam winner.

Cone said how Game One played out only bolstered his belief that the series will most likely head to a seventh game.

“I think this is just a taste of what we are going to see for the next six games,” said Cone. “I think it’s going to be a pingpong affair, it will go back and forth. One game allows you to believe in your game plan and so you are not going to make too many adjustments to it.

“But this game is prototypical of what every game is going to be like. It may not be a one-point game, or two-point game, but it might be a five or six-point game but the rhythm and the struggle for every possession will be the same all the way through,” said Cone.

Although Ginebra won Game One, Cone said Meralco did a good job of controlling the tempo of the game, forcing a deliberate style of play which is in complete contrast to how the Kings want to do things on the court.

With Ginebra unable to control its own pace, Cone said every possession was important in Game One, something that he sees will be the same from hereon in the series.

“Meralco is so disciplined in the way they are playing, it’s really hard to get out of their tempo. You have to play at a match tempo the whole way and that’s not really a comfortable tempo for us.

"We kinda develop into more of a free-willing, passhappy, get-up-and-down-thefloor kind of team and they slow the game down to a grind so it just really comes down to each possession.

“Everything is riding on one possession throughout the whole game. You feel like if you blow one possession, you might blow the game. It’s really possession by possession at this point.

"It’s not the way we would necessarily want to play. They are just good at it that we are forced to play that kind of tempo. Hopefully, as the series progresses, we can start finding the kind of rhythm that we want to play in,” said Cone. Spin.ph