CHRISTIAN STANDHARDINGER manned the fort while LA Tenorio and Justin Brownlee were busy sniping in Barangay Ginebra San Miguel’s 96-81 Game 1 victory over the Hongkong Bay Area Dragons in the Philippine Basketball Association Commissioner’s Cup Finals on Sunday night at the Mall of Asia Arena.
“The best thing we did, I thought, was we limited [Andrew] Nicholson’s threes, that’s very huge,” Cone said. “And Christian [Standhardinger] did a tremendous job of guarding him.”
Nicholson is a certified top gun for the visitors with pre-Finals averages of 36.22 points and 13.33 rebounds.
But with Standhardinger, known for his moniker C-Stan, shackling him all night long, Nicholson was below normal with 27 points on 10 of 17 shooting from the field—3 of 6 in three-pointers—with 12 rebounds. He shot a poor 4 of 6 from the foul lines.
Nicholson went 46 percent in three-pointers built around 39 he made out of 84 attempts from the regular season to the playoffs
The Gin Kings dazzled their fans—all 18,252 of cheering their voices hoarse inside the Pasay City arena as playmaker Tenorio and resident import Brownlee got their rhythm to beat the supposedly near-invincible Dragons.
Brownlee, a shoo-in for the Best Import award, had 28 points, 13 rebounds and six assists, while Tenorio added 22 points in a remarkable performance from a battle-scarred and jaded 38-year-old veteran.
Defense was tops on Ginebra’s mission. Not only did the Gin Kings put the cuffs on Nicholson, they did so to practically the entire team—the Dragons went 30 of 78 from the field as against the Gin Kings’ 38 of 76.
“We got a little bit lucky [Hayden] Blankely couldn’t hit his shots. He got good looks, but he just didn’t make it,” Cone said.
Blankely missed all his nine attempts from beyond the arc and went 2 of 13 from the two-point zone for a measly four-point game. He normed 12.2 points in 17 games before the Finals.
Standhardinger is a tried and tested import stopper will again carry on his huge shoulders Ginebra’s defense in Game 2 set at 5:45 p.m. on Wednesday at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.
Cone wants C-Stan to again weather the storm the rest of the best-of-seven series.
“I don’t know if C-Stan can keep that up for seven games, but we are certainly going to try to keep that up,” Cone said.
Standhardinger finished with 16 points, 10 rebounds, four assists and two steals in Game 1.