EXPECT coach Brian Goorjian to fight fire with fire as Bay Area seeks to level the PBA Commissioner’s Cup Finals against Barangay Ginebra in Game Two on Wednesday night at the Smart-Araneta Coliseum.
Brian Goorjian on Ginebra physicality
Surprised to see a change in officiating in the finals opener that allowed the Gin Kings, specifically Christian Standhardinger to get away with body checks on Andrew Nicholson, Goorjian has prepared the Dragons to adjust to the physicality and calls.
“From the jumpball, when the ball was thrown up and Andrew went to run down the floor, he was popped five times by the German kid, stepped in front, hit him, hit him again, hit him again, hit him again,” Goorjian recalled on SPIN POV on the eve of Game Two that tips off at 5:45 p.m.
“And that was their formula for him moving up and down the floor. And we struggled to get Andrew Nicholson catches in the game.”

After averaging 35 points and 22 attempts in in four games in the semifinals, Nicholson was held to a still solid, but conference-low 27 points on just 17 tries in the Dragons’ 96-81 loss.
Dragons forward Zhu Songwei, though, hardly got any leeway while defending Gin Kings import Justin Brownlee.
“You got to remember from the flip side of this, our kid that was guarding Brownlee got three fouls and the score was 15 to eight and he got three fouls the first three minutes,” Goorjian noted.
But make no mistake: Goorjian doesn’t mind the change in officiating. The veteran American-Australian mentor knows the Dragons have to learn on the fly.
“I just want to make it clear to everybody: nobody’s complaining about the officials,” Goorjian insisted. “It’s we’re in the finals and what I didn’t know was how they’re guarding Andrew and there’s a rule that I’ve always played underneath: it’s called freedom of movement. That you’re allowed to run and you’ve got to be able to move. And freedom of movement was not allowed or taken away.”
“Now, as a coach, if that’s the rule, there’s no problem,” he added. “You want to be able to use it in your package as well.”
Goorjian already made clarifications to PBA officials so the Dragons can also use the changes to their advantage.
“Now we come back and we’ve got to do a couple things here to enable him to touch the ball,” the Dragons coach said of Nicholson. “And number two is: we got to take that into our arsenal and use that against them.”
“It’s the art of war,” he added. “And the Filipinos do it better than anybody. It’s your league. We’re the visitors and we’ve got to adapt. We’ve got to learn. Again, it was a surprise to me and my team was not prepared for that. And they will be.”
“We did go to the officials, just to find out - not complain – here’s a few clips, here’s what you allowed. Are we allowed to do that? If we are, thank you very much.' It just sends a message to them that you’ll be seeing some from our end of it.”
Get more of the latest sports news & updates on SPIN.ph