After the smoke of the battles cleared, it’s now down to two teams slugging it out for the PBA Commissioner’s Cup title.

And no one saw these two teams coming.

Rain or Shine and Alaska, teams who live on their own, survive on their own and win or lose on their own, are clashing in a title series for the first time, marking, in a long, long while, that no teams belonging to the San Miguel Corp. and PLDT conglomerates are playing in a championship series.

The Elasto Painters did their job and took out teams coming from the San Miguel group, Barangay Ginebra in the quarterfinals and then rock-solid San Miguel Beer in the Final Four.

Alaska, on the other hand, outsteadied teams coming from the PLDT block – Tropang TNT in the first round of the playoffs and then Meralco in the semis, with both series going the distance and the Aces prevailing narrowly.

This is a rare occurrence, to say the least, with the SMC and PLDT groups having the best players in the country, a battery of coaches, the best-paid imports and the crowd support to boot.

“We’ll get to see it,” Alaska coach Alex Compton said of the best-of-seven series, dubbed by several members of the media as “Independence Day,” because of the two autonomous teams.

“We talked on numerous occasions before the start of some conferences about it,” Compton told reporters, referring to some exchanges with Rain or Shine owners Terry Que and Raymund Yu — his former bosses — about a title series pitting the Painters against the Aces.

“Let’s have an independent finals one time,” Compton said of their conversation. “So we (Alaska and Rain or Shine) kept on going. They make it (to the Finals) and we don’t. We make it and they don’t.

“It never worked (in the past),” he said. “But we’re here now. And we will finally get to see it.”

*****

This series will be a very interesting one. It will be very close.

Yeng Guiao will be shooting to win the seventh title in his coaching career, Alex Compton, on the other hand, will be trying to win his first and rebound from that painful debacle in the Philippine Cup where he couldn’t close out San Miguel in the Finals and lost a 3-0 lead.

“We’ve gotten over that, we’ve never even talked about that,” Compton told reporters on Thursday afternoon during the formal launch of the series at the PBA Café. “It’s how we bounce back that matters. We have moved on.”

It will be interesting to see how these two teams play when the stakes are highest, because they basically mirror each other when it comes to playing styles, the only difference being that Rain or Shine has a deeper bench.

This will be a very physical series whichever way one looks at it, with Rain or Shine having the willingness to rough it up against anyone and Alaska, because of Calvin Abueva, known to not being one willing to take things sitting down.

“Iba ito,” Abueva said also during the launch. “Wala nang mas tataas pa sa Finals na ito. Trophy na pinaglalabanan dito, kaya dapat bigay todo na lahat.”

Asked about the looming physicality of the series, especially with enforcers like Beau Belga on the other side, Abueva gave a wide smile and blurted out something that will surely drum up this series more.

“Gusto nyo ba talagang physical,” Abueva asked while looking at the direction of Belga, with a smile, of course. “Sa nakikita nyo ngayon (in the semifinals) di pa ba physical yun?

“Gusto nyo pa ba dagdagan,” he said as everyone laughed.

Belga, on the other hand, refused to look at it that way.

“Andito lang naman kami para manalo, kaya gagawin namin lahat para ma-achieve yun,” said the 6-foot-5 slotman, a favorite of Guiao because of his no-nonsense attitude.

With a championship on the line, there will surely be fireworks in this series and you can be sure that Abueva and Belga will be there leading their teams. And it will be beautiful for the game.

*****

Vic Manuel, the other half of Alaska’s “Bruise Brothers” together with Abueva, will likely be out for the early part of the Finals if not the entire series itself.

JV Casio, the heady point guard who has helped the Aces achieve their successes of late, has been declared out for the series because of a knee injury, and the duo not being there certainly comes as a big blow for the team that won this tournament in 2013 with Rob Dozier.

If this series drags on deep, the Aces could find themselves in trouble because of the sheer depth of the Rain or Shine bench.

Alaska needs to come up with stinging punches right in the first two games and win them to dictate the series; the Aces mustn’t let the Painters come close if they want to snap a string of bridesmaid finishes.

Hunger will not be a question because both teams are, with Rain or Shine’s first and only title coming in 2012 with Jamelle Cornley, and the Painters certainly are due for a win.

It will be good to see this series going seven games, but a fearless forecast of this corner feels that it will not come to that, with Rain or Shine to overwhelm Alaska — if Manuel and Casio are indeed out — in just six.