Ginebra battles Magnolia as golden season opens with one less surprise
The long and winding 50th season of the Philippine Basketball Association tips off Sunday with the opening of the centerpiece Philippine Cup at Smart Araneta Coliseum.
And there will be a lot of burning questions that will seek answers. Except maybe one.
June Mar Fajardo is expected to take home a ninth MVP trophy, an incredible and unprecedented number considering that no one else has won more than four—and that the well-liked San Miguel Beer center didn’t set out on this path in the first place.
“Who would have thought?” Fajardo said in Filipino. “I was never a huge basketball fan [when I was younger], but here I am possibly winning another MVP.”
Everything else about the season will be answered as the games proceed.
Barangay Ginebra and Magnolia, who will square off at 7:30 p.m. following the Leo Awards and the traditional opening ceremonies, will try to shed light on some of those mysteries that will hover over the golden season set to run until December 2026 with the usual three-conference format.
Ginebra’s Tim Cone and Magnolia rookie coach LA Tenorio are looking to end their respective teams’ title droughts, among the subplots going into the longest season that the league has ever had.
Winning a championship right away seems to be the least of Tenorio’s concerns.
“The team is learning and I’m also learning,” Tenorio told the Inquirer recently. “I still have a lot of things that I need to know and I think the comfortability [as a head coach] will come in if I know my players are ready and well-prepared. And that’s my job.”
Biggest threat
The Gin Kings and Hotshots are two of the biggest threats to the Philippine Cup reign of their other sister team, San Miguel, who are hell-bent on extending their dominance in the PBA’s centerpiece event.
The Beermen and Fajardo will have a lot of help in CJ Perez and Jericho Cruz while rookie Chris Miller, who is 34, may show up as a potential steal the way he’s played in tune-up games.
The Beermen foiled the Grand Slam bid of TNT, which is eager to go back to its winning ways with a healthy roster and some new additions that included pesky guard Jio Jalalon, who joined the Tropang Giga as an unrestricted free agent on Saturday.
There’s plenty of talk that Converge may spoil the SMC-MVP party following the arrival of rookie Juan Gomez de Liaño, while its fellow independent team Rain or Shine may do so if it can get over the hump of four successive semifinal exits with free agent pickup Stanley Pringle.
Meralco aims for a repeat of its 2024 Philippine Cup title run, NLEX seems hungry to rebound from a near semis appearance, while Blackwater may sneak into the playoffs with the selection of rookie guard Dalph Panopio.
Titan Ultra, the new kids on the block, look to go through some growing pains even as a young Phoenix squad hopes to get some wins under rookie coach Willy Wilson.
Another rookie coach, Ronald Tubid, tries to defy low expectations of a ragtag Terrafirma team while it awaits the arrival of No. 1 overall pick Geo Chiu later in the conference, at the earliest.
The Philippine Cup eliminations will run until mid-December, with most of the games to be held in the two Ynares Center facilities in Antipolo and Montalban, while the PBA will also stage matches in Dubai and Bahrain.
