Game 7, you could see the situation of the two teams fighting by the way the crowd cheered. About 15-20% of the crowd in the Araneta Coliseum were Air21 fans and they cheer with excitement, they cheer with anticipation on how their team will win the championship. For the 80-85% of the crowd which are Ginebra diehards you could feel the difference of their cheer. They Cheer in despair, they cheer their hearts out in hope that the basketball god will somehow answer their prayers that Ginebra could somehow pull it off.

Now for the millions of Barangay Ginebra fans how sweet can this be? Ginebra going from a team with the worst record at the start of the conference to having a 13game winning streak punctuated by Jayjay Helterbrand and Chris Alexander winning the Best Player of the Conference and Best Import of the Conference award respectively and ultimately a 97-84 Game 7 victory for the Smart PBA Fiesta Cup

For Air 21, the only downfall in this run aside from not winning the championship is by being the loser in a 7th game of the series. It would have been different if the series ended in the 5th or 6th game. In the mean time they will be hunted by the feeling that they lost the most important game of their lives knowing that they have control and believing that they are the better team.

If I’m not a Ginebra fan I would easily put my money on the Express team. They have the mismatch in pg to pf position. They are taller, faster and potentially more talented than the Kings. I even started to believe that a young team could actually win the championships. I thought Bo Perasol could be right in saying that they will win the championship through their offense and disregard the “defense wins championships” mentality.

Coach Jhong couldn’t say it any better “The important thing is to keep on trying. It’s hard to explain how we won the series. The players deserve all the credit for not giving up despite all the adversities we had to encounter.”. True enough, with Jayjay unable to play, and Caguioa, Menk, Tubid, Reavis and Artadi also nursing various injuries, it’s really hard to believe that somehow Ginebra pulled it off.

I don’t question how the MVP of the Finals award is given but I felt that if the Final’s MVP is to be given to more than 1 person then Caguioa should be a part of it. He has been the heart and soul of the team and he also made crucial points are particularly about 3 crucial rebounds when Air21 was closing the gap. But nevertheless, Menk and Tubid both deserve the award. I hope Ginebra Management can bring back all the players from this championship team because as of now all their player contracts expires with Ronald Tubid being the only player with active contract. =)

-bLeaze

Just to express, not to impress