HOUSTON - Just like that, Ariel Vanguardia is out as Blackwater head coach.
Which wasn't surprising given that his record in this conference was 1-10, an abject nine percent win rate. In his quick, in-for-breakfast-and-gone-before lunch tenure, Vanguardia's overall record was 10-36.
Unlike his predecessor, Nash Racela, who learned about the anguish of his dismissal only through social media, Vanguardia at least got the courtesy of a meeting.
READ: Jeff Cariaso officially assumes Blackwater job
Despite the rosy depiction of the divorce and the promise of another gig waiting to ensure Ariel has a dignified exit, it doesn't sanitize the ugly fact that Vanguardia was fired.
Rejection hurts, regardless of the verbiage.
Like the few other Blackwater coaches that were dismissed before him, Vanguardia didn't deserve the firing. It was, however, a necessary move for management to mask its own failures.
Once misleadingly alluded to as the Elite, the now-renamed Bossings have a notorious history of giving away their assets time and time again.
Among those who went through the revolving door on the way to enhancing richer teams under the MVP Group umbrella include Bobby Ray Parks, Allein Maliksi, Mac Belo, Don Trollano and Poy Erram, not to mention a horde of top draft picks.
EXERCISE IN FUTILITY
Unless Blackwater manifests the sincere commitment to win by resolving to keep and use their draft picks as building blocks for a competitive run every conference, anyone who assumes the coaching job there is perfectly set up to fail, and subsequently, get fired.
The full and unequivocal support a coach needs for his team to become a championship contender cannot be over emphasized. And you don't have to peer farther than the soon-to-start Governors' Cup Finals to find proof.
Over at Ginebra, Tim Cone, the highest-paid coach in the PBA, recently saw his already loaded roster get infused by two fresh and immensely talented young bloods in Jamie Malonzo and Jeremiah Gray.
At TNT, substitute coach Jojo Lastimosa inherited a powerhouse line-up inhabited by the highest-paid PBA player in Mikey Williams and a blue chip, NBA-credentialed import in Rondae Hollis-Jefferson.
Clearly, the math at Blackwater is focused only on manpower subtraction, not addition.
Blackwater, on the other hand, appears to only be interested in emptying their armory from the best weapons of competition.
How then can we expect even a dollop of prosperity under such an environment?
Now that he has officially taken over Vanguardia's slot, Jeff Cariaso, the longtime bench boss at Alaska and briefly with Converge, will swiftly find out that coaching Blackwater is a personal sacrifice.
But it's a job, a prestigious one of only 12 in the entire Philippines.
Call me a cynic, but give it two years and I have a bad feeling that Cariaso, a good coach and an even better guy, will suffer the same fate as Racela and Vanguardia and will also be blamed for his bosses' ineptitude.
REF-RAF. Besides absolutely having the most talent in the league, an active PBA coach explained why Ginebra is so difficult to beat in the Finals.
"They have home court advantage in all seven games."
And that's because they are the league's crowd darlings. Whether it's imagined or real, the Gins Kings' popularity and status as rainmakers give them an upper hand in the officiating.
Each time the Gins play in a crucial playoffs game, social media gets flooded with snide comments about the opposing team playing five against eight, the three being the refs.
When officiating Ginebra games, do the refs make more house calls than a doctor?
Maybe. Maybe not.
But the PBA is determined to remove those doubts of bias by announcing yesterday that it is fielding only the best group of refs, a lean but mean crew of whistleblowers.
Whether this means we will have a cleanly officiated series remains to be determined.
But one thing is certain: Beginning with Game 1 of the championship series on April 9, we will know the answer once we see it.
Right, Kume Marcial?
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