CHISM FINALLY NAILS ONE OVER TEXTERS
Talk about weathering the storm.
Against Jayson Castro’s 27-point first half explosion, which ended with a career-high 44-point game, as well as Talk ‘N Text building a lead as big as 17, Rain or Shine turned the tide and gritted its way to tie the Finals at one game apiece on Friday.
Spearheading the third quarter fightback and playing through an injured right hand was Wayne Chism, who served as a rock for the Elasto Painters as they finally solved the puzzle that was the Tropang Texters and nail its first win against their rivals in four conferences.
“Finally 17-1,” he said. “It’s nice to get a win against these guys especially after we lost to them 3-0 last year.”
Going through 18 games to finally nail the elusive victory, Chism and the E-Painters are hoping for three more of this to finally secure their second franchise title.
“Any team is capable of being beat, and tonight we showed them that we can beat this team. But we have to continue this play for the rest of the series to become over the top of this team,” Chism said. “This year, it’s gonna be a lot different.
“We don’t want to be down 3-0 to these guys cause if we do, it’s gonna be a problem cause it’s a tough team to come back on.”
The former Tennessee Volunteer steered Rain or Shine with his 13 third quarter markers and fought through the pain on his hand after a bad fall in the payoff period to finish with a double-double with his 30 points and 13 rebounds, to go along his three assists and three blocks.
“I have to fight through it. It’s a long series. I’m not going to use it as an excuse and I have to be there for my team,” Chism said.
As the series now goes back to square one and a virtual best-of-five, Chism said that the main priority still for Rain or Shine is to stop Castro.
“They run with a lot of confidence especially with Jayson shooting the lights out. You can call him JJ (Redick) or any one of those best NBA shooters. You can call him Steph (Curry) right now. He has so much confidence that if you tell him to not shoot, he’ll get mad at you. He kept shooting and he had all the good confidence,” he said.
“We just had to contain him, weather the storm against his shots tonight, and we did a good job. But other than that, he played his tail off.”
Chism also reminded his teammates to replicate the effort they put in tonight, saying, “When you come out against Talk ‘N Text, you can’t come out relaxed. You can see that Jayson could probably beat you by himself if he wanted to, and he almost did.”
“We cannot come out relaxed because they are very dangerous.” (RL)
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