ANTIPOLO – An underwhelming performance of San Miguel import Marcus Lee in his first game in the PBA 50th Season Commissioner's Cup evoked a feeling of deja vu from last season's ill-fated campaign in this same conference.
Lee only had four points at the start of their campaign, which is, so far, the lowest output by any import this conference. He added had five rebounds, three assists, and three steals in the 119-112 loss to Titan Ultra.
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Lee played for 24 minutes and 46 seconds, but didn't see action in the entire fourth quarter, with the Beermen opting to play with the local line-up that was coming off a title run in the Philippine Cup last February.
Curiously, it was in that fourth period where San Miguel came all the way back from 21 points down to cut the deficit to four. Titan Ultra, however, showed composure in the end to come away with its first win of the conference.
San Miguel coach Leo Austria said he decided to bench Lee for the entire fourth quarter because the locals were stepping up.
“I thought na because we were down by 21 points and I have to give some chance to the local players,” said Austria. “We were able to catch up to four points in the last four, five minutes. But we committed turnovers and that resulted in easy points for them.”
Though coming off a championship in the all-local conference, the Beermen entered the Commissioner's Cup with something to prove after they missed the playoffs last season with a 5-7 win-loss record.
Austria, however, said the loss can't be attributed to the import alone, saying the team didn't have enough preparation for the new conference with June Mar Fajardo, Cjay Perez, and Jericho Cruz coming off international basketball duties.
Slow starts are also nothing new to the Beermen.
The Beermen also went 0-2 to start the Philippine Cup before racking up 10 straight wins on their way to the championship. Austria, however, would rather begin the conference with a win.
“Actually, it was a tough one for us. I kept on telling them na we don't want the last conference to happen to us,” said Austria.
“There are two players na naglaro sa Gilas. They joined the team two weeks before and that's not enough. And the two key players, Chris Ross and Jericho Cruz (may injury), talagang they are really an important part of the team.”
Austria added the Beermen gave up way too many transition points which would have been contained had they played good defense.
“And it's very obvious na in our game, na-outrun kami. Although we scored 109 points, we didn't play good defense and we allowed them to score 29 points on fastbreaks, and the 29 turnovers that's 58 easy points and that's half of the score of the opponent.
"It's a terrible performance from our team,” said Austria.
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