A SCENE in a Barangay Ginebra championship usually has fans celebrating inside a packed stadium at the Smart-Araneta Coliseum or at the Mall of Asia Arena, just like early this year when the Gin Kings captured the Governors’ Cup crown against Meralco.
Not this season.
The PBA was forced play its 2020 season without spectators as the league played its games inside a bubble to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among the teams.
Even with its passionate supporters left to watch the team on television and online, Barangay Ginebra showed its might in the PBA Philippine Cup bubble, defeating TNT in five games at the Angeles University Foundation Sports Arena and Cultural Center.
Barangay Ginebra coach Tim Cone admitted the feeling is very different from his 22 previous PBA crowns.
“It’s a little bit of a surreal feeling being here. Everything is different. The celebration is different, the awarding is different. It’s just a very different experience. But our guys battled for this,” said Cone.
The environment may be different, but the feeling of winning another title remains the same, and even more with the circumstances Ginebra needed to overcome.
The major hurdle for Ginebra was to play in a sprint of a shortened season in which the Philippine Cup was compressed to two months, with playdates being held every day during the elimination round and with few days off in the playoffs.
“There were so much out-of-the-box thinking that had to go into being successful here. I think you really had to think out of the box here. the experience is so different from the other championships you have. It’s so unique. When we get back to Manila, and we look back at this one, we will just be amazed at how this all evolved and how it came together and how we actually ended up winning a championship,” Cone said.
The great thing about Ginebra’s Philippine Cup title of 2020, Cone said, is that the Gin Kings went through the whole route just like they would in a pre-pandemic conference.
“It’s so unique – this championship. There’s only one. It’s in a bubble. This is one that is going to be remembered. We went through a full conference. It wasn’t like a mini-tournament which we talked about at first. That’s why it’s amazing – went through a whole elimination period, went through a whole playoff and still was able to pull it out and win a championship. That is amazing, I think. It’s going to be remembered forever,” said Cone.
Cone also hopes that Ginebra will go down as the only bubble champion in PBA history.
“Hopefully, there’s only going to be one bubble championship. And if there’s only one bubble championship, we got it. And that’s so cool. Twenty, thirty years from now, maybe when we look back and they say, that bubble championship, they will remember our team because we had the most unique championship in the history of the PBA. It’s really cool,” said Cone.
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