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FUTURE SMILES AT BURGER KING

Whoppers beat Painters, claim third place trophy

By Arman Carandang

07/02/2009

Between two teams that seemed to have lost their fire after their semifinal debacles, Burger King at least found some reason to celebrate after settling for third place for the third time in the PBA-Fiesta Conference last night.

“Third place is good enough for this team,” uttered Burger King coach Yeng Guiao as he made his way to the press room after his Whoppers plastered Rain or Shine, 132-118.

“This is our first conference together, and half of the team is new. So, I think room for improvement in this team is big,” added Guiao, while citing the yeoman job of some of his locals, including Erick Rodriguez, Arwind Santos and Gary David among others.

Guiao, whose Whoppers lost to San Miguel Beer in the best-of-seven semifinals (2-4), said he is looking forward to the number one pick in the draft, something which he said would help a lot in the team build-up come next conference.

“There’s a lot of upside-downs with this team. This is a combination of veterans like Arwind (Santos) and Gary (David) and new ones like Aaron (Aaban), Mark (Yee), Beau (Belga) and Erik Rodriguez. So this team can only get better,” said Guiao, who is giving strong considerations to acquiring Japeth Aguilar “in the event he joins the draft.”

“If Japeth is entering the draft he’s going to be the next dominant big man without a doubt (in the league),” said Guiao. The annual draft is set on Aug. 2 at Market!Market in Taguig City.

In notching the third place, the Whoppers also avenged their 112-118 loss to the Elasto Painters last March 25. The two teams battled only once in the inter-intra classification phase of the season-ending tournament.

Notwithstanding the loss, however, the Elasto Painters still earned their best finish thus far since entering the league, then still known as Welcoat Paint, in 2006. The team finished 10th and last in its first four conferences before finishing sixth in this season’s Philippine Cup.

The game lacked in fire, that there was not a trace of some form of jubilation on the good-sized crowd, although occasionally the crowd cheered when Arwind Santos scored on a slam dunk during a breakaway play early in the fourth when the Whoppers posted a 105-80 lead.

The Whoppers dictated the game and gamely protected their lead by matching just everything the Elasto Painters could offer. By the time the Elasto Paiters started improving, time was already on the side of Whoppers.

Santos finished with 27 points, with David, Rodriguez, Aban and Carlo Sharma and Mark Yee turning in twin-digit outputs. Import Shawn Daniel added 16.