More than three decades of coaching and Tim Cone hadn’t seen something extraordinary — until Scottie Thompson came up with a humongous performance in Barangay Ginebra’s vengeful 105-91 triumph over San Miguel Beer in Game 4 of their PBA Philippine Cup best-of-seven semifinals series Sunday at the Mall of Asia Arena.
Thompson completed the first triple-double performance by a local player who produced 30-plus points in 36 years as the former Most Valuable Player played the best game of his career and powered the league’s most popular team in levelling the race-to-four series at 2-2 apiece.
“Let me just say it was a legendary performance and we’re going to remember this for a long time,” said Cone during the postgame interview. “Scottie is the most humble guy you’ll ever meet, probably outside of June Mar (Fajardo), so it’s a competition and we’ve seen that on the Gilas team.”
“But no doubt, it’s a legendary performance. He was more aggressive tonight. He was looking for things. The more he became a threat, the more he opened up things for everybody with all these passes.”
Cone burst onto the coaching scene midway the 1989 season as he was plucked out from the TV panel while working as a game analyst during PBA games.
But as successful as he became as a coach, Cone had never seen a special performance just like what Thompson did.
“I didn’t know that Scottie was putting those numbers up,” added Cone. “We’re just trying to figure out a way to win. In my mind, it was a quiet triple-double, I don;t know, maybe the fans know, but I didn;t know what’s going on.”
In achieving the latest feat of tallying a career-high 35 points to go along with 11 rebounds and 11 assists, Thompson deflected the credit to his teammates.
“Credit to my teammates. We stayed together through ups and downs. Mahirap (doing things on both ends of the floor). Every game is going to be different. The same approach, but mahirap to play the same game. But the (high) intensity should be the same or higitan pa,” added Thompson.
