Probably tired of little bro Meralco Bolts showing them up in the ongoing Philippine Cup (they're just two wins away from winning their first PBA championship), TNT Tropang Giga tried to go on a shopping spree by paying a visit to one of their alleged farm teams.
That yielded Blackwater Bossing point guard Rey Nambatac in exchange for Kib Montalbo and a future second-round pick. To PBA commissioner Willie Marcial's credit he thumbed down the unfair trade, but it remains to be seen if an amended trade package would shake the erstwhile Rain or Shine Elasto Painter leading scorer from the grasps of the Ever Bilena franchise.
It's an unfair trade, to say the least, as the 5'11" Nambatac averaged around 11 points, more than 4 assists, and nearly 3 rebounds per game for the Bossing last season, while the 6'0" Montalbo was only good for 3.4 points, 2.1 assists, and 1.1 rebounds for Tropang Giga in the erstwhile All-Filipino Conference. Even if you throw in a first-round pick—instead of the pampalubag loob na second round pick—it's still highway robbery (but what's new in the PBA?).
A more amicable trade, perhaps, is TNT giving up the rights to either prodigal sons Ray Parks or Mikey Williams for Nambatac along with a first-round pick and their pick of promising younglings Christian David, Tyrus Hill, or Rey Swerte.
But what makes the proposed Nambatac-to-TNT swap comical was the proposed trade came a mere days after Blackwater team owner Dioceldo Sy suggested a PBA dispersal draft to bring parity to Asia's first play for play league.
Under Sy's "Protect 10" proposal all 12 PBA teams could only hold on to—as the name already suggests—10 players on their current roster with the rest available to be signed by other teams.
Theoretically, the San Miguel Beermen will be affected the most by this proposal as head coach Jorge Gallent can actually go three starting five deep in an any game. In fact, the SMC Group's flagship team is so loaded that its purported 11th and 12th man can start in bottom feeders like the aforementioned Blackwater, Converge FiberXers, and Terrafirma Dyip (although they fared much better this conference, but reportedly is losing Javi Gomez de Liano to the KBL—he should've been kept by Barangay Ginebra).
So far though, Gallent and company hasn't shown this might in their best-of-7 finals series in the Philippines Cup finals against the Bolts, as the combo coaching duo of head coach Luigi Trillo and active consultant Nenad Vucinic (or is the other way around?) has done a masterful job in keeping SMB at bay as Meralco is lighting the way ahead, two games to one.
Is it black magic that's fueling Meralco's sudden resurgence in the Philippine Cup finals? Well, not in a literal sense as Norman Black and their former starting point guard Aaron Black are out of the picture as the latter has been "demoted" to consultant and the latter is in sickbay.
Nonetheless, the Bolts have been weaving some sort of sorcery that has seven-time MVP Junemar Fajardo in a trance trying to figure out the defensive posturing of Meralco's three-headed monster of Brandon Bates, Raymond Almazan, and Norbert Torres.
Under Trillo and Vucinic's baton, Meralco has also used their quickness in neutralizing SMB's tremendous size advantage, as they have sped up the game and even in the halfcourt have been trigger happy as their motto appears to be, the best shot is the first open shot (which has made undersized forward Cliff Hodge along with the two Chrises—Banchero and Newsome—so effective in the first three games of the finals).
I still hope that San Miguel manages to lift itself from doldrums as I'm a man of my word and promised Jericho Cruz that I will support his team (But it's gonna be a long series at this point so might as well kiss his chances of representing the Northern Marianas in the 2024 Micronesian Games goodbye).
In the NBA Finals, the Celtics are cruising to title No. 18...I guess, the NBA is following the script and it's up to the Lakers to cowboy up (sorry Dallas) and be a championship contender once more.
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