Butiki Bullets: Tripleheader Thoughts

• The Sta Lucia win over Rain or Shine was the first overtime game of the young season. That game reminded me of something Wayne Winston said in an interview over at Truehoop. For the statheads out there, you might know Winston (along with Jeff Sagarin) as the creator of the Winval system, which is basically a sophisticated form of plus-minus. Winston and Sagarin are also the main stat guys behind the Dallas Mavericks. Anyway, he made the argument that when a team is down by two and has the last shot the best math is to go for the win with a three-pointer. He says that a team, on the average, makes a two-pointer about 50% of the time. Teams also generally win overtime about half the time. That means that if you go for two, you only have about a 25% chance of winning the game. Meanwhile, teams that go for three will make it 30% of the time. Sure, his argument ignores other factors like the player match-ups, what the defense gives and if you actually have a shooter who can make threes at a 30% clip. The logic also goes against everything most of us know about basketball. But hey, it’s hard to argue with the math. Case in point, Rain or Shine was down two with 8 seconds to go in this game before Gabe Norwood made a terrific play to force overtime. The Elastopainters went on to lose anyway. So maybe there is something there, after all.

• Could this be the end of naturalization candidate CJ Giles’ stint with the National Team? CJ Giles was fielded in for only the first 5 minutes of the Smart Gilas-Talk N Text game. It was reported that Giles was dealing with some personal problems and was not expected to focus on the game. PBA chief statistician Fidel Mangonon made some early tweets about rumored reasons for the benching. One was about Giles receiving news about his son having a potential life-threatening medical condition, while another had to do with disciplinary action on his lack of professionalism. Rick Olivares of Bleacher Brew also pieced together parts of the story noting Giles’ “nocturnal pursuits” and throwing out the idea that this could be it for CJ in Gilas.

• Smart Gilas lost by 31 to a very sharp Talk N Text team as they played without three key players. Giles played in limited minutes. Chris Tiu and Rabeh Al-Hussaini were also out. Some positives from the game? Mark Barroca broke out of his funk, tallying 16 points, 8 rebounds and 9 assists. Japeth Aguilar, obviously uncomfortable without Giles beside him, was going after every rebound and loose ball. He finished with 14 and 14. And while the defense is really bad without CJ, it was guys like Dylan Ababou and RJ Jazul who chucked Gilas out of this game. The system takes time getting used to, and hopefully, these guys can learn when they can get their shots in flow of the offense like JV Casio and Tiu, rather than forcing up jumpers at the first sign of daylight.

• Some fantastic individual performances last night. Kelly Williams is definitely back in form with a 28-point, 14-rebound, 6-assist line against Rain or Shine. Arwind Santos earned his first victory as a San Miguel Beerman as he put up 28 points, 18 rebounds and 2 assists in a win over Burger King.