First Impression on New Coaches

(c) PBA Media Bureau

Other than coach Nash Racela, all the new coaches have received their baptism of fire. So, here are my first impression on them.

Globalport - Coach Franz Pumaren

It is true that coach Franz has been with Globalport starting from 2016 Governors Cup  but he was official named as the coach of the team, a few days ago. 

It seems like he will not implement his patented full court press or, maybe, they are still on the process of implementing it. Terrence was so efficient in their game 1 because he was not isolating right away and they started a lot of their sets, with him off-the-ball. 

The offense looks very modern while their defense is organized and well patched. Let us see how they respond against the Star Hotshots. 

Rain or Shine - Coach Caloy Garcia
We all know that he is a returnee but it has been five years from his last stint. With the looks of it, he has semi-adopted coach Yeng Guiao's minutes distribution scheme. Jericho Cruz, Gabe Norwood and Maverick Ahanmisi all played over 25 minutes and the way I look at it, they will get consistent 25+ minutes.

Don't expect them to play as fast as they used to be and even their sniping attempts could be lower. As of now, I am a little bit off with the way they run against TNT because they did a lot of isolations and that could be disastrous in the playoffs.

Star - Coach Chito Victolero
Coach Chito did not get a lot of fanfare when it was announced that he will be the next coach of Star. So, how did he do in their first game?

I will give him a failing grade.They played sloppy basketball, as in very sloppy because they committed 29 turnovers! But on the other aspects, It was a good thing that they out-rebounded San Miguel by six rebounds but their assist rate was rubbish. They also failed to give consistent good looks to their scorer. 

I don't know if they are on the right track but don't lose hope yet, they still have ten games to go.