MANILA, Philippines – Justin Brownlee was hard on himself after Ginebra’s 103-111 loss against a red-hot Phoenix squad in the 2019 PBA Commissioner’s Cup on Friday, June 28.
The fan favorite import practically scored all of Ginebra’s fourth-quarter points, dropping 21 of their 22 markers as they tried to mount a comeback against the unrelenting one-two punch of Matthew Wright and import Richard Howell.
Despite tallying an all-around line of 31 points, 15 rebounds, 7 assists, 6 steals and 3 blocks in the loss, Brownlee still blamed no one but himself for his team’s downfall.
“Man, I gotta do a better job moving the ball, getting people involved for sure. I had a lot of turnovers this game,” he said after the game.
“I think we just gotta get that rhythm back on offense. Mainly me, I gotta do a better job getting guys involved.”
Apart from an offense over-reliant on Brownlee’s strength, Ginebra was also non-existent on the other end of the floor, as they gave up a staggering 45 points to Phoenix in the 3rd quarter that ultimately turned the tide to their favor.
Brownlee said they’d have to do way better next time around.
“Man, it was just our defense. We gave up 40-something points in that 3rd quarter. That’s very unlikely, so it’s something that we definitely don’t want to do,” he said.
“If we wanna win moving forward starting on Sunday, we just gotta play our defense and that’s when we’re gonna win games.”
With the loss, Ginebra is now tied with Alaska and Phoenix at 4-4 with 3 games left to play. Brownlee noted that they have to start winning to avoid a bad place in their title retention bid.
“We definitely wanna finish out winning of course. We wanna be top 6. Trying to get that twice-to-beat disadvantage is really tough especially with the top teams TNT and NorthPort,” he said.
“Those two teams have been playing great. Definitely been playing championship basketball, so we definitely wanna put ourselves in that position and hopefully get our rhythm mainly on the defensive end and we can start winning.” – Rappler.com
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