COLUMN: After ROS, Converge is next to challenge SMC-MVP hegemony

ONCE more, the so-called PBAindependents had no answer to the strength, depth, and financial resources of the league’s all-mighty squads.

Rain or Shine was the latest independent team to take on a PBAbehemoth. The result was, expectedly, predictable. It was like the E-painters had been sucked into a storm surge and hurled and tossed around like flotsam.

This independent team tried its best to flip the script, fought with gut and heart, and dug deep into its reservoir of grit, but, in the end, all it could manage was one win in a seven-game series that TNT ended, almost mercifully, at five.

READ Chot Reyes, RHJ heap praises on promising Rain or Shine team

The result was yet one more confirmation that the PBA remains a domain of the haves, while the have-nots — like the brave RoS squad, along with sacrificial lambs like Bossing, Terrafirma, Phoenix, and Northport — will never find a regular place at the winner’s table, not now and not in the foreseeable future. (Converge may possibly be another matter; more of that below.)

TNT coach Chot Reyes tried to be generous after the 4-1 shellacking of the Elasto Painters, saying: "Imagine that team in just a year, next year, or even later this year, the kind of pieces that they have, they’re deep in every position, they have a very cohesive game plan, they were very clear on what they want to do. They have a very clear identity and that’s going to be a real load."

Very funny.

Listen to Chot talk about a team that’s been in the league longer than he lets on, yet here he is pontificating that in a year or two the team could win a championship! What a joke. This same team has been fighting like a possessed madman for years but, even given its ultimate effort, has not been able to duplicate its win — it’s last, by the way — in the 2016 Commissioner’s Cup.

From that year onwards, no team outside the San Mig and TNT organizations has ever won a PBA championship. From 2016 to 2024, San Miguel has grabbed seven titles, Barangay Ginebra six, TNT two, and Meralco one.

Chot was, of course, trying to be magnanimous, an easy enough thing to do when your behemoth team has just made the semifinal series look like a workout session as it moves towards a finals showdown with fellow behemoth Ginebra.

That finals, by the way, will pit an MVP team against an RSA team, which will make the PBA championship look like, well, business as usual. What to expect? Three of four semifinalists belong to the RSA and MVP teams.

FiberXers flex muscle

But, maybe, the PBA future is not that bleak? On the horizon is Converge, a team that swallowed Alaska’s franchise in 2022. After what appeared to be a normal PBA debut, when Converge placed last among 12 teams, in the ongoing season the FiberXers seem to have flexed some muscle.

It made the quarterfinals and Converge battled San Miguel toe-to-toe before fading in the fifth game of the best-of-five series. That Converge was even able to reach five games is an achievement, what with its opponent being the league’s winningest team.

PHOTO: PBA Images

Also ponder this: Converge still has to exhibit Justine Baltazar, the No. 1 pick in the 2024 draft, now just waiting for his MPBL contract to end before jumping into the fray of the PBA.

Then there’s also Converge’s move to join the sweepstakes on Troy Rosario. The 32-year-old is the hottest player available in the free-agency market, and is the object of desire of many teams, including those in the RSA and MVP camps.

At some point, Converge might just emerge as the most serious challenger to the RSA and MVP hegemony in the PBA. Its owners are themselves billionaires — Dennis Anthony Uy , Dennis Pineda and Frank Lao, among them — and they seem to be in the PBA for the long haul, so maybe, just maybe, the behemoths can finally get real competition.