TIM Cone has taken his act to the next level in the year about to end.
In the course of winning two major tournaments in 2023, Cone beat a pair of giant teams handled no less by Olympic-caliber coaches.
The 66-year-old mentor began the year by steering Barangay Ginebra past the Hong Kong team Bay Area Dragons of Australian national coach Brian Goorjian, 114-99, to clinch the PBA Governors Cup championship in a winner-take-all Game 7 before a record crowd at the Philippine Arena.
Cone leads historic Asiad campaign
He then finished the season with an even bigger bang as Cone rallied Gilas Pilipinas against host China, coached by European league legend Aleksandar ‘Sasa’ Dordevic in an epic 77-76 win in the semifinals of the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, China, which later paved the way for the country to regain the men’s basketball gold after 61 long years.
The stirring feats only added to the legend of Cone, regarded as the most accomplished coach in PBA history who’s the only person to score two grand slams - and with two different teams at that.
Without much ado, SPIN.ph was unanimous in recognizing Cone as its Coach of the Year for its annual Sportsman of the Year Award (SOTY).
A self-proclaimed disciple of the late coaching guru Virgilio ‘Baby’ Dalupan, Cone describes the experiences as ‘tremendous moments that I’m going to remember for a lifetime.’
So who wouldn’t be?
Philippine pride was obviously on the line on both occasions.
Against a Dragons side which alternately utilized former NBA players Andrew Nicholson and Myles Powell, the Kings needed to dig deep into their arsenal to repel the challenge of the foreign guest team in a thrilling title series that needed seven games to decide.
In the end, before a roaring crowd of 54,589 inside the world’s largest indoor arena, Cone cast his magic behind a strong Ginebra start out of the gates before ditching a last-minute rally by the No. 1 seeded Dragons to win the championship.
It was Cone’s historic 25th pro championship authored against the 70-year-old Goorjian, the man credited for giving Australia its first-ever Olympic men’s basketball medal – a bronze – during the 2020 Tokyo Games, and considered the most successful coach in Australian basketball history.
“That was the cherry on top,” said Cone of the triumph. “Being able to go up against a great coach like Brian Goorjian and being able to beat a foreign team among 54,000 people at the Philippine Arena.”
Cone wasn’t done yet as he reserved his best for last nine months later.
Suddenly asked to call the shots for Gilas Pilipinas in the 19th Asiad following a FIBA World Cup campaign that went astray, Cone had to make do with last-minute preparations for a hastily-assembled team marked by the uncertainty on which players will make up its roster.
Again, Cone rose to the occasion.
Stung by an 87-62 loss to Jordan in the preliminaries, Gilas needed to win its last four games if it was to accomplish a mission that appeared impossible to pull off.
But the Filipinos did. They beat Qatar in the qualification for a quarterfinals berth, 80-41, and then barely survived Iran in the Final Eight, 84-83, to set up a semifinal showdown with host China, a team the Filipinos drubbed by 21 points during the FIBA World Cup in Manila despite having a new coach in the 57-year-old Dordevic, who piloted Serbia to the silver medal in the 2016 Rio De Janeiro Olympics.
That’s when the drama further heightened. Gilas was down by 18 at the break, and by 20 early in the third quarter.
Gilas battled its way back in the fourth quarter and managed to close the gap to single digits, but still found itself trailing, 76-67, with 3:06 remaining in the game before a jampacked crowd at the Hangzhou Olympic Centre.
Naturalized player Justin Brownlee then took over, scoring eight points in a 10-0 blast by the Philippines including back-to-back three-pointers that gave the team its first ever taste of the lead, 77-76.
Suddenly under fire, the defending champions failed to deliver as Zhang Zhenlin misfired on an open jumper, paving the way for Gilas to complete perhaps one of the greatest comeback wins ever in Philippine basketball history.
Gilas pounces on finals opportunity
It was the first time in 33 years the Philippines was in the Asiad finals, and didn’t let such an elusive moment slip away.
Gilas took care of business against Jordan as Cone shut down the opposition’s vaunted outside shooting on the way to an 80-70 payback win and the country’s first-ever gold in the quadrennial showcase since the 1962 staging when the late Hall of Fame Caloy Loyzaga and the rest of the Philippine team conquered Jakarta, Indonesia.
“I’ve been able to coach two grand slams, big championships, Justin’s shot (Game 6 of the 2016 Governors’ Cup), and all that stuff. But this is something different, this is really special,” said Cone afterwards.
In the end, Cone remained humble despite all of he accomplished, preferring to defer everything to his players. As they say, players win games, coaches lose them.
“Games like these are not really coaches’ games, it’s a players’ game. From a coaching standpoint, you like to have an effect on the game,” he said. “But these guys continue to battle and battle. The players make plays, and they either make play for you or they don’t.”
Truly, not only a Coach of the Year, but a Coach for the Ages.
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