Unknown to many, LA Tenorio is playing with a bum elbow in the ongoing Oppo PBA Commissioner’s Cup finals.
But his condition hasn’t kept him from steering the Barangay Ginebra San Miguel which is now up 2-0 against the Meralco Bolts in the championship series.
The veteran guard proved it in Game 2 when he came up with big plays down the stretch, allowing the Gin Kings to overcome a six-point deficit in the last four minutes before pulling off a huge win.
“LA has been a big shot-maker for us the whole conference. He’s playing with a bum elbow, too. He’s gonna have surgery on his elbow at the end of the conference. He’s playing through it and he’s been shooting the ball well,” Barangay Ginebra coach Tim Cone told sportswriters.
Tenorio let loose a backbreaking three-pointer down the stretch that sealed the win for the Gin Kings.
“It was a Hail Mary shot,” said Tenorio. “Timing. The whole game medyo off timing ako sa offense. Timing lang to be aggressive. Nakuha sa dasal.”
Earlier, he also came up with a big three-point play and a steal against the young Baser Amer to cap his long-game brilliance.
But Tenorio didn’t only preserve his best performance for the finals, according to Barangay Ginebra coach Tim Cone who has witnessed his tried-and-tested guard come up big a lot of times.
“That big three-point shot he had. He hit that so many times this year, not just this conference, but this whole year. He had that big three-point shot down the stretch, shot clock winding down, and in the finals, we come to expect it,” said Cone.
“It was an amazing shot. That’s the shot that turned the whole game around. It was anybody’s game until he hit that shot. If he missed that, they’ll come down the floor and they hit a trey, it’s all tied up. That was the biggest shot of the game.”
