BARANGAY Ginebra will use the next two weeks to beef up the spot left temporarily by Jamie Malonzo who suffered a calf injury last week.
Head coach Tim Cone said they are actively searching for a player who could fill the small forward position with Malonzo out for a couple of weeks due to the injury.
Cone confirmed it has a claim for David Murrell, who was relegated by Magnolia to its unrestricted free agent with rights to salaries list and is even looking at players in the MPBL just to cover up the spot.
“Is there a trade pending? Not at all. Have we talked to other teams? Not at all, yet,” said Cone on Friday night. “But I’m sure there might be things out there, that’s what the week is going to be. Could be a free agent, could be somebody that has been released by the other teams.”
“I think we already put a claim in for David Murrell, and we are waiting to see if anybody else is going to pick him up. We are looking for some guys from the MPBL that have gone there recently,” said Cone.
Cone said the Malonzo injury isn’t the sole reason why they are actively looking for a small forward as the position has become thin due to injuries.
“If you think about it, a year or so ago, that was our strongest, deepest position. We had Miah (Jeremiah Gray) who was playing so well in the PBA on the Tour team and we were really planning on leaning heavily on him.”
“Aljon (Mariano) has been out for quite a while. He’s had a couple of surgeries. And he was there and we had Jamie, and then we picked up JD (Dillinger). We felt that position was particularly strong. And now, we basically lost all of them. Now, that position has become the thinnest position on our team,” said Cone.
The 25-time PBA champion coach said Ginebra doesn’t have the pieces on the team right now to fill that gap in the small forward position.
“We are looking for help outside the line-up to fill that void. Right now, I think Sidney (Onwubere) is our four-man, and after Sidney, we go down to a guard. We really don’t have anything in between except Ralph (Cu). He is not a defined three. He is more of a stretch four. It’s a big gap between our four-man and two-man,” said Cone.
Cone said the next two weeks are a perfect time to look for players since they will only play two games during that stretch.
“I don’t know what’s available to us. But we have eight days before we play on Saturday and I think we won’t play until Sunday after that… So we have 16 days over our next two games. We have to figure something out within the 16 days,” said Cone.
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