Ginebra played better than our team – MVP

source: Tito Talao | mb.com.ph

Like the noble captain of a doomed ship, Talk ’N Text team owner Manny V. Pangilinan waited until everyone aboard had been saved before quietly stepping off deck Sunday night.

With a small retinue of business associates, confidants and friends keeping him company, the telecommunications tycoon remained on his ringside seat for more than an hour after the lights had dimmed at the Araneta Coliseum, apparently waiting for the anguished feeling of defeat to pass over.

Eventually, the man majestically known as MVP made his way out through the Big Dome corridor, passing the Talk ’N Text locker room and looking straight ahead.

A lawyer associate inquired reverently if he could give a couple of waiting sportswriters a few minutes, and he stopped to oblige.

He was asked if he regrets walking out in Game 4.

“No, not all,” said the PLDT-Smart Communications chairman. “I thought it was the right decision under the circumstances.”

And his thoughts about Game 5?

“Ginebra played very well and they deserved to win,” Pangilinan said. “We didn’t play as well as we should have, pero ganoon talaga.”

What’s in store for the team in the next couple of weeks?

“We don’t know yet. We’ll probably evaluate the performance of everybody,” he said.

Would there be a top-to-bottom shakeup?

“Mahirap sabihin,” he said. “It’s difficult to say because it has just finished. But we’ll have to review the team’s performance.”

Asked whether Serbian coach Rajko Toroman, who handles the RP-Smart Gilas team, has anything to say about the game, Pangilinan said he hasn’t spoken with him.

Later that night, however, the TNT top brass, who apparently thought the question referred to coach Norman Black who did play-by-play analysis of Game 5 for Solar Sports TV, confirmed via text message, through Smart Sports’ Patrick Gregorio, that indeed “Coach Toroman and I chatted for a while right after the game.”

What it was about, MVP’s text didn’t say. And we didn’t ask.