WE MUST PLAY COMPLETE GAME, NOT BY HALVES – THORNTON
In his month-long PBA stint, Al Thornton has been dogged by issues on the safety of his knee brace.
And slowly, he has come to cope with the situation. At the same time, he is helping his team compete.
“I’m getting used to the second brace that my trainer got me. At the end of the day, I have to play by the rules,” Thornton said.
And finally on Tuesday, NLEX snapped its two-game losing streak with a 100-93 come-from-behind win over San Miguel.
“I felt like us being down 1-4 and to get this win, it feels good,” said the NBA veteran, who dropped 15 of his 30 points in the fourth quarter, while hauling down 12 boards.
“I think we’re moving in the right direction. We just have to find a way not to come out sluggish in the first half. The second half, we played well due to our defense and rebounding. We just have to find a way to play consistent the whole game. We’ve got to keep on building on this and stop playing by halves.”
The slow start, catchup job has hobbled NLEX in its recent games, including a tough loss to Talk ‘N Text, when Thornton and company bounced back from 29 points down only to let Texter Jayson Castro sink a buzzer-beater to win it for TNT and break the Road Warriors’ hearts .
He said, “I think we showed what we can do against Talk ‘N Text. We played half of that game, and we came from all the way back. We should’ve won, but Castro shot the buzzer-beater.”
But that’s behind him now, and this win over the Beermen is definitely a plus as they brace for the final five games of the conference while sporting a 2-4 card.
Subscribe to INQUIRER PLUS to get access to The Philippine Daily Inquirer & other 70+ titles, share up to 5 gadgets, listen to the news, download as early as 4am & share articles on social media. Call 896 6000.