YOU don’t call it a finals when…………..

YOU don’t call it a finals when one team is beating the other black and blue and depriving the public of an expected exciting series finale.
No one wants to see a team beating the hell out of its counterpart, pummeling them at every turn in the finals. No sports fan wants to see the score ends at 100-70, a rebounding disparity of 25 to 30 in a game or a team playing better, dishing out 20 more assists than the squad it has defeated.
You don’t call it a finals when you see a thousand or few more hundreds empty seats from Game 1 until it last. A finals game needed hype so as to attract more viewers be they a fan or not. What’s the lowest attendance in a finals game? Could it be the 1987 finals between Hills Brothers and San Miguel? Or could it be the Swift vs Seven-Up encounter when the Uncolas got swept in 1992? I can’t recall. But these fans wanted to see some great basketball. They wanted to see Jose Slaughter popping up treys one after another. They wanted to see The Hurricane Tony Harris and anticipate of another high-scoring game from him that could reach more than a 100 all by his lonesome.
They wanted to see some good games. They wanted to see players hitting baskets one after another. They wanted to see teams going after the ball, diving to get it and doing whatever it takes to get the ball. They wanted to see players blocking their opponents’ shot as if saying that “shooting over him won’t be an easy task.” They wanted to see baskets in spurts, cutting huge deficits and getting back into the game to turn a lopsided match into an exciting down-to-the-wire encounter. In other words, fans came to see the game and wanted to get their money’s worth.
And most of all, you don’t call it a finals when you see referees deciding the outcome of the match.
Players decide the turnout of the game – and not the officials. Referees should be on top of the situation, but they don’t put to a halt to a great play. They should not deprive a player or a team making good stop. They should not make bail out calls to superstars and give them freebies. Just because James Yap is one of the biggest draws in the PBA today and Kerby Raymundo is the team captain of Purefoods and was a two-time all-pro national team member weren’t good reasons enough to separate them from other players or a team even if it’s Joe Devance, a former top overall pick, and Alaska, a classy organization that won 12 PBA titles and a win away from duplicating the championship collections of the legendary Crispa Redmanizers.
Referee Maui Mauricio should forget thinking of becoming this season’s Referee of the Year with his bum call in the last 1.7 seconds of Game 2 of the best-of-seven championship series. Without giving consideration that it won’t have any effects at all should he stayed quiet and watched Raymundo let loose a jumper than blowing his whistle, the referee made a gutsy call and was cocky enough to justify his claim that there was a contact. Had Raymundo’s shot went in even without the whistle, Purefoods would have tasted the sweetest win – a victory that happened after a long chase when the squad needed last action heroes in Yap and Raymundo.
Instead, the Giants had to cap that big run with a bailout call from Mauricio. Not only did the referee allowed Raymundo of shattering the game’s final deadlock at 85-all, he also spoiled what could be an interesting finish to Game 2 regardless of who will win. But why decide the outcome based on your whistle? Isn’t it more logical to see players finish the game and be given credit for the win?
PBA commissioner Sonny Barrios remained mum for any comments at this time, but I expect him to give a mouthful on Mauricio and the two other officials who worked on that game.
How does Purefoods treats Game 2 victory that put the team ahead 2-0 in the series?
Of course, coach Ryan Gregorio could always tell a win is a win and he would be glad to take it in a best-of-seven showdown. Without taking away anything from Purefoods, I would tell the Giants did a good job of coming back and turning the game into a humdinger.
What did Alaska feel when it lost the game and fell down 0-2?
Despite the injustice done in the closing seconds, the Aces played with so much class when the stakes were higher. They were deprived of a chance to win – at least for the next five minutes or so in that game – had the referee didn’t blow his whistle.
There were no protest filed, no walkouts made. Just a sudden burst of emotion against the call that went against them and that’s it. They remained classy even against the toughest time. I wonder if some teams should admire what the Aces did and emulate it.
And for coach Tim Cone, who is certainly the more outspoken among the two mentors battling in the finals, he didn’t make the bum calls as excuse. He was looking at the bigger picture in that game – an Alaska fan who was struggling for his life.
In his Twitter account., Cone recounted his failure to use one of his timeouts so as to stop the action and possibly help out Steve Racelis, who collapsed in the Alaska gallery during the heat of the action. For the multi-titled mentor, who value so much winning, championship and team chemistry, he sees life as bigger than the game of basketball.
“I wish I had been quick-thinking enough to use one of our own timeouts to stop the game for him,” said Cone. “He’s undergoing brain surgery at the Lourdes Hospital.”

“The game is not sacred. Life is. My prayers and the Alaska organization's prayers go out to him and his family,” said Cone. “The worst thing about Game 2 was the PBA's refusal to stop the game when a fan was in obviously serious distress. I was shocked.”

All those things that happened to Alaska – the injustice, the fan struggling for his life and the deficit that only happened for Alaska for just the second time since Cone has been at the helm – should be used as a motivating drive for the Aces’ next game. We could only hope a real finals game should be played this time.