MANILA, 13 July 2006 — Chill the bubbly.
Purefoods broke out of the gates hard and never let up, playing brilliantly all game last night to post a commanding 3-1 lead over Red Bull after a 99-81 victory in Game 4 of their PBA Philippine Cup title series at the Araneta Coliseum.
Jun Limpot scored 13 of his 19 points in the first half and James Yap provided the finishing touches to what turned out to be his valedictory speech as Purefoods zeroed in on another all-Pinoy title.
“It takes four games to win a series, but obviously, we have a clear edge now,” said coach Ryan Gregorio. “This victory is a testament to how the team has stayed playing as a team despite the on-going awards.
“I’m glad that it (awards) is all over now,” Gregorio added. “We can focus more intently on wrapping this (series) up.”
But Gregorio and his crew will have to wait as the league departed from long-standing tradition and has ordered the playing of Game 5 to Wednesday next week to give way to an international badminton tournament hosted by one of its members.
It was a double kill of sorts for the Giants, after Yap also romped off with the season Most Valuable Player award in simple rites earlier.
Yap won the statistical points derby, topped the four-man balloting and received majority of the votes from the covering media to become only the second guard in the last nine seasons to win the coveted individual award.
The 6-foot-2 husband of controversial actress and host Kris Aquino won it running away after accumulating a total of 7,863 points.
Raymundo, who had 2,960 points, and Enrico Villanueva, the Player of the Conference in the Fiesta Cup, had 2,108 to finish third and be included in the Mythical First Team together with Lordy Tugade and Roger Yap.
Red Bull’s Larry Fonacier was the hands-down choice for the Rookie of the Year award even as Marc Pingris, Dorian Pena of San Miguel, Topex Robinson of Red Bull, Wynne Arboleda of Air21 and Alaska’s Nic Belasco were named to the All-Defensive team.
Pingris, who was the brightest all-around performer for the team last night with 18 points, 14 rebounds, six blocks and three assists, incidentally, was named the Most Improved Player of the year.
The win also moved Barako coach Yeng Guiao within another loss of again failing to win the title missing in his trophy case.
After winning four import-laced tournaments — two each with defunct Swift and Red Bull — most everyone expected the firebrand mentor to cash in on his latest opportunity.
But two lopsided losses in this series, also counting the Game 2 debacle, could have dug Guiao a hole not even his bright coaching mind could claw out from.
Only the Jervis Cole-powered Ginebra San Miguel team in the 1991 Third Conference was able to come back from such a deficit in a title series to win, doing it against Bobby Parks and the Shell Turbochargers.
Limpot is playing out the twilight of his career that has missed only an MVP trophy and, curiously, a championship.
Yap also played splendidly in the first half by hitting 3-of-3 attempts from three-point range that boosted boosted the Giants to leads of as many as 34 points.
The best that Red Bull, which got 25 points from Enrico Villanueva, could come to was within 13 with five minutes to go.
And Yap justified the handsome MVP trophy he won just more than two hours earlier by hitting a triple and two free throws that put the game to bed.
