Hotshots show way to Aces in eight title meetings so far
Ten days from now, the Magnolia Hotshots and the Alaska Aces start their best-of-seven series for the PBA 2018 season-ending Governors’ Cup at the Mall of Asia Arena.
This will be eighth time the Aces and the former Purefoods Hotdogs will battle for a PBA championship since the two teams acquired their respective play-for-pay franchises in the late 80s.
Alaska first played in the Asia’s pioneer pro-league in1986, while Purefoods shed its amateur status two years later, making this year the Hotdogs’ 30th anniversary in big-time caging stage.
The then Air Force, the name Alaska used from 1989 to 1991, and the now Hotshots, Purefoods’ adopted moniker since 1017, have faced each other of eight times starting in 1990 season-ending Third Conference celebrating Alaska’s fourth year as pro and Purefoods’ only second.
The then Hotdogs, with the late coaching legend Baby Dalupan at the helm, edged the Milkmen, then already handled by coach Tim Cone, 3-2, in the bet-of-five title series for the Jaime Zobel de Ayala-owned franchise.
That conference featured two imports each team and Purefoods tapped the services of Daren Queenan and Rob Rose, who replaced Walker Russell during the elimination round.
The Air Force took a 2-0 lead with a win away to clinch the best of five series. Dalupan’s boys mightily came back though to emerge winner of the series, giving the franchise its first PBA title.
The championship was Dalupan’s last of his pro-career 15, but it made him the first coach in PBA history to win PBA championships in three different decades, a feat duplicated later by Norman Black and Cone himself.
The two of the league’s most popular ballclubs met seven more times in the Finals, the last time in the 2010 Philippine Cup won, too, by Purefoods, at that time coached by Ryan Gregorio, via a 4-0 sweep.
Counting its title victories in the 1994 Commissioner’s Cup, 4-1; 1997 All-Filipino, 4-2; and 2000 Governors’ Cup, the San Miguel-Purefoods franchise has so far owns a 5-3 advantage over the Wilfred Uytengsu-owned club in their eight finals meetings to date.
The Aces prevailed in the 1996 All-Filipino on their way to that season’s sweep under Cone, who came up with his of two Grandslams, including his similar feat with Purefoods’ San Mig Coffee in 2014.
Incidentally, both Purefoods and Alaska had, at, one time or another, Cone as coach.
Other Alaska championship wins over Purefoods came in the 1994 Commissioner’s Cup and the 1997 Governors’ Cup.
The post Hotshots show way to Aces in eight title meetings so far appeared first on The Manila Times Online.