Can Cone replicate previous success with Ginebra?
Probably in the biggest challenge of his coaching career, Tim Cone will now be the one counted on to end the suffering for the Ginebra fans. But will his success follow him there?
In Ginebra, he’ll be having a team which is already solid from top-down, from the backcourt of Mark Caguioa, LA Tenorio, Sol Mercado, and Jayjay Helterbrand, to wings like Mac Baracael and Chris Ellis, to promising big guys like Greg Slaughter, Japeth Aguilar, and Dave Marcelo.
However, the Gin Kings potency on paper has not really translated into triumphs as of late, which have sent them in a title drought for seven years running now.
So would Cone be the magic pill the league’s most popular ballclub needs?
The management thinks so. But Cone will be the first to say that there isn’t any formula, and the team just has to figure itself out and know that it can achieve so much more than what it had in the past few years.
Before Cone got to where he is right now, he was a budding young buck given a chance to prove himself with a young Alaska squad in 1989.
A blue-eyed American who was told “may gatas pa sa labi” (no pun intended) when it comes to coaching in the PBA, Cone had to find a system which worked to his liking.
It also helped him that he had guys like Jojo Lastimosa, Bong Alvarez, Eugene Quilban, and import Sean Chambers when he first won a title in 1991.
But building a title team to a Grand Slam team? That needed some solid core, smart drafting, and executing wise trades.
Alaska pulled the trigger in 1991 when it sent Elmer Cabahug to Purefoods for Lastimosa. It also did the same to the troubled Alvarez in 1994, sending him to Sta. Lucia for Bong Hawkins.
The Draft was also good for the Milkmen, nabbing Abarrientos in 1993 (third overall), and both Poch Juinio (fifth) and Jeffrey Cariaso (sixth) in 1995.
The same can be said with the San Mig Coffee squad, which already had James Yap, Marc Pingris, and Peter June Simon leading the fort.
Together with young guns Mark Barroca and Alex Mallari, both who are trying to prove themselves to the league, the Mixers got Ian Sangalang, Justin Melton, and JR Cawaling in the 2013 Draft.
Cone was honored to have worked with the team’s management, which he admitted was an integral part in making the teams he had successful, saying, “I got uncommon support from them.”
And he expects the same with his new team.
“Coming to Ginebra, we’re gonna be a team that from a management standpoint to the team and players’ standpoint, everything is going to be discussed. We’ll think things logically, take a look at the lineups, and over time, we’ll try to cover our weaknesses and build on our strengths,” he said.
The players’ dedication to Cone’s system should also be a priority–the triangle offense he employs is an intricate system that emphasizes on ball and player movements.
“It’s an offense, it’s very unique, that evolves,” Cone said in a previous interview. “The more you run it, the more it fills. You run the offense a certain way, you run this particular pattern of the offense and the defense learns that pattern and they start to stop that pattern. What will happen is the triangle is a counter-offense, read-and-react counter-offense, they will try to counter-act what the defense does. And when they do, the triangle itself will develop a different pattern.”
Sounds a bit complicated, right? But great things doesn’t happen overnight, and Cone is just a testament to that argument.
“When I started learning it in 1991, I learned it by myself. I had no instructions, nobody there to guide me and such. It took me a good two to three years before I started to feel comfortable on what I was doing. But now, I’ve been teaching it for so long, I had a lot of help in learning the triangle since then,” he said.
And that’s the key, continuity–the old cliche of coaches telling the players to “stick with the system” has allowed Cone to garner so much hardware in the PBA.
“Now, I’m at that point that if you give me a new team, I feel I can teach the triangle in a few weeks and be running it in a high level, but we’ll continue to develop and develop to always get better. And that’s what I like about the triangle, it’s improving, it never stagnates, it never stops.”
But more than anything, the biggest hump for Cone will be to drive Ginebra, a team which seemingly had all the makings to be great, yet in the past few seasons, weren’t meeting its set expectations.
“It’s really going to come down if I can get the players to buy-in to what we’re going to do. I know we talk about the run-and-gun and such, but it’s really to get the guys to buy-in defensively. It’s always a process to get the buy-in going with the players,” he said.
With Cone, Ginebra no longer has any excuse to underperform. The Gin Kings are getting the most decorated PBA coach there is, the winningest in PBA history, who also comes with the discipline and level of dedication it longed for since the days of coach Bobby Jaworski.
This should also signal the end of the constant search of coaches for the crowd darlings, also amping up the sense of urgency for the players, knowing that if they still fail, the blame will no longer fall on the shoulders of the coach.
Though Cone’s place in the PBA history books is already set, it’s still a challenge for him to architect the same success he had with Alaska and Purefoods.
And if he does just that, it wouldn’t be a surprise if Cone can scoop up another Grand Slam.
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