TNT Tropang Giga completed a run to the PBA Governors' Cup championship on Friday by toppling Barangay Ginebra with a 97-93 win in Game 6.
TNT was the best team throughout the Governors' Cup and, behind Mikey Williams' nine 3-pointers and 38 points, reaffirmed it in front of over 13,000 fans to win the best-of-seven series.
"It's incredible. It's unbelievable," TNT coach Jojo Lastimosa said. "Ginebra hadn't lost two in a row this conference, much less lose three in a row. So that's what we talked about before the game.
"That was my pregame talk. But if there's somebody who can beat them, it's the team that I'm with right now. And again, it's not an easy task.
"A lot of teams tried to beat Tim (Cone) and (Justin) Brownlee at this stage, and they never did... I knew that we had to come up with a better game plan or at least a better game to dethrone them."
History at every turn
There were so many firsts in this series.
It is the first Governors' Cup title for the TNT franchise and 9th overall. Ginebra, which had won four of the past five Governors' Cup titles, lost for the first time in the Governors' Cup Finals with Brownlee as an import.
"Man, it's a tough loss," said Brownlee, who had been hospitalized after Game 5 due to severe food poisoning. "Give a lot of credit to TNT, they played great. Obviously, they deserved it. They had a great import, they came and played great for the locals."
"I just gotta give a shout out to their whole team. Well-deserved, they played hard, they fought hard for it."
Brownlee, who had 29 points, said he had more or less recovered from his ordeal, explaining: "I felt close to 100%. I didn't eat as I wanted to because I guess from the food poisoning, the appetite was gone.
"But I felt great, close to 100%. Felt great out there, and just feel disappointed we came up a little short."
Lastimosa, the team manager suddenly thrust into the head coaching position, became the first to win a title in his maiden conference since Joel Banal 20 years ago.
Chot Reyes, who stepped aside as TNT head coach before the start of the conference to concentrate on Gilas Pilipinas, was impressed with Lastimosa's leadership.
"(It was a) fantastic coaching job," Reyes said. "His calm demeanor was a very, very big factor. It stabilized the players a lot."
The Tropang Giga's magnificent import Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, who sealed the win with two pressure-packed free throws with 3.2 seconds left after Brownlee missed a game-tying pull-up jumper, won his first championship as a basketball pro.
Mikey Williams, had 38 points and nine 3-pointers and was named Finals MVP. He became the first player in PBA Finals history to convert at least eight triples in a game twice.
The last of those triples was clutch and almost magical, bouncing off the backboard and swishing through the net to put TNT ahead for good at 95-93 with 1:12 left.
"I've been confident all series," Williams said. "I've been confident all year. I just found a way to assert myself and be aggressive in certain instances. Today, I know they relied on me a lot. They were fine with me. I was just trying to knock it down and get the ball."
Cone said it was the 3-pointer off the backboard by Williams that sealed the game.
"They played really well," Cone said. "They certainly deserved it more than we did."
Lastimosa knew his star player was locked in 24 hours before the game, stating: "He came up to me and said, 'coach, we're ready to go.' And true enough, Mikey balled out tonight.
"Without the 38 of Mikee, because Calvin (Oftana) wasn't connecting, Glenn (Khobuntin) wasn't connecting, Jayson (Castro) was only late in the game where he had some really nice layups, but other than that, if you take away the 38 of Mikee, oh my God, we would not survive this game."
Williams, though, gave Ginebra a lifeline with ten seconds left after inexplicably miffing two free throws that could have sealed it.
"Going through my mind, I don't know what was going through my mind," he revealed. "I think I was telling myself I can't miss them. It made me miss them anyway. It's definitely going to haunt me in my sleep tonight."
Disappointing end to a trying tournament for Ginebra
Ginebra had gone through so much this conference, beginning with LA Tenorio's cancer diagnosis, followed by Japeth Aguilar's knee injury and ending with Brownlee's food poisoning.
Yet somehow they soldiered on and entered the finals with a fairly good chance of going back-to-back.
"I'm tired. I'm tired. I'm tired. I'm tired," Cone said. "What can I say?
"The journey was arduous. We're going to remember it for many reasons. Most especially because of LA. The courage that LA showed throughout this whole thing, coming to games, being around.
It was really inspiring to watch. He's such an inspiring person. We had our chances. We had some bad luck. Justin's food poisoning.
RHJ, Brownlee form mutual admiration society
This series will be remembered for the import match-up between Hollis-Jefferson and Brownlee.
It's not often that foreigners guard each other, but this series was an exception as Hollis-Jefferson took it upon himself to guard the league's most beloved import and Brownlee took on the challenge of taking on its most talented.
They both came away impressed with the other.
"Yeah. I'm going to be honest, it's guarding Justin," Hollis-Jefferson said when asked what was the toughest part of the championship series. "He was a hell of an opponent to go against. Very skilled, knows how to get to his spots. He hit me with a couple good moves."
Brownlee returned the compliment.
"He definitely pushed me and played me great the whole series," Brownlee said. "Hopefully I did the same with him, and he expressed that. And it was just basically just mutual respect, and I congratulate him."