ON a night when Justin Brownlee won his fourth PBA Best Import award, he put the shine on counterpart Chris McCullough, who gave him fits late in TNT’s 106-98 win over Barangay Ginebra to level the 50th Season Commissioner's Cup finals at two wins apiece.
While Brownlee desperately tried to will the Gin Kings back after trailing by as many as 20, McCullough matched him shot for shot late in the game, as the Tropang 5G kept the crowd favorites at bay, disappointing most of the 16,823 people in the Smart Araneta Coliseum.
JB fired 32 points to C-Mac's 24, but the latter did well enough in the fourth quarter to preserve Jordan Heading’s 29-point night and help carry TNT to a win.
READ: TNT rides Heading's hot hands to beat Ginebra in Game 4, even PBA Finals
“That’s what we expect from him. He’s that type of import,” Brownlee said.
“He’s been playing in Asia, overseas, he’s very experienced. It’s kind of what we expected of him: to be a hundred.”
McCullough scored 11 of the Tropang 5G's last 18 points, responding to the surging Brownlee, who almost single-handedly brought the Gin Kings back to life.
PBA Finals now a best-of-three
While losing Game 4 was terrible, Brownlee wasn’t going to lose sleep over it. He knows that they got outplayed by a better team on Wednesday, but they still have plenty of chances to recover.
“It’s a best-of-three now. Got to give a lot of credit to TNT, they came out and played very well, especially in the second half,” he said.
“They were the aggressors tonight. I think we lost our rhythm in the second half, especially offensively, but we just got to go back to the drawing board and figure out what we could do better.”
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