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Coach Tim Cone admitted he had mixed feelings about the blockbuster trade that saw Barangay Ginebra ship Greg Slaughter to NorthPort in exchange for Christian Standhardinger.
While the deal paved the way for Ginebra to acquire a superstar in Standhardinger, it also meant Cone bidding goodbye to Slaughter, one of his old reliables since he first got into the team.
“It is always bittersweet because Greg Slaughter and I were very close,” Cone told The Chasedown show about the trade.
“We were close. I came into the team and he was the first guy I contacted, him and Mark Caguioa.”
Under the tutelage of Cone, Slaughter helped lead Ginebra in capturing 4 of its last 5 championships over the last 5 seasons.
The seven-foot Slaughter even won a Best Player of the Conference award in the 2017 Governors’ Cup.
Injuries, however, kept Slaughter sidelined for several stretches of time.
“He had a lot of misfortunes in terms of injuries. We were not able, I think, to really fully immerse him into what we wanted to do,” Cone said.
“By the time we got him back in, we were already progressing onto something else. He was always trying to catch up to what we were doing. But there is no doubt about it. He is a really talented guy.”
After taking a PBA hiatus, Slaughter seemed on his way to a Ginebra comeback as the franchise signed him up to a new contract earlier this year.
But Ginebra eventually parted ways with Slaughter after 7 years since picking him the No. 1 overall in the 2013 Draft by sending him to NorthPort for Standhardinger.
“It was not until a week or two before the trade that I started to hear from the management that that trade was getting traction, that they were starting to talk about it. It came pretty quickly,” Cone said.
“But if you’re going to trade a guy like Greg, getting a guy like Christian is probably the best thing you can get.”
Cone and Standhardinger are no strangers to each other, having worked together as part of the Gilas Pilipinas crew that won a gold medal in the 2019 Southeast Asian Games.
“I think Christian will come in and step in to us and play the perfect role for us that we need him to do,” Cone said.
“Overall, he is just going to come in and help us be a winning team and give us an opportunity to win championships.”
Meanwhile, Cone only has high hopes that Slaughter will flourish as he resumes his PBA career at NorthPort.
“I think for Greg, he is going to step over at NorthPort and I think he is going to have that opportunity where the team is built around him,” Cone said. – Rappler.com
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