Chris Newsome followed up his career-high 40 points with a 22-point outing in Meralco’s Game 5 win.
Chris Newsome took pride in making things tough for CJ Perez in Meralco’s 92-88 Game 5 win over San Miguel on Friday, June 14, in the PBA Season 48 Philippine Cup Finals.
Perez had to bleed to score 17 points and made only a quarter of his 16 attempts in the loss that allowed the Bolts to move on the threshold of a breakthrough PBA title.
Newsome, who finished with 22 points, deflected credit to his teammates.
With guys like Allein Maliksi, Chris Banchero, Raymond Almazan, and Bong Quinto stepping up on offense, Newsome could focus on putting the cuffs on his fellow Gilas mainstay.
“My teammates showed up today. Raymond played really well today. Allein played well. Bong played well today. Cliff and CB (played well). A lot of those guys came and chipped in any way they can,” said the cat-quick guard, who was also coming off a career-high 40-point outing in the Game 4 loss.
“Whenever I got those guys doing good things on offense, then it makes my job a lot easier and I can really focus on my assignment on defense and get my energy towards defense. That’s what I love to do, you guys know that. Defense is something I take pride in.”
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But guarding the Commissioner’s Cup Best Player of the Conference didn’t come easy. It hasn’t been easy.
“CJ being my assignment today, it’s hard to stop somebody like CJ. But I just wanted to make it as difficult as possible, try to limit him,” Newsome said.
And with the Bolts looking to finish the Beermen off in Game 6 on Sunday, June 16, Newsome knows he needs to do a batter job on defense.
“He was able to take that last-second three again so that’s something that i can continue to do better and find ways to keep on improving,” he said, referring to Perez’s go-ahead triple that allowed the Beermen to close in, 87-90 in the waning moments of Game 5.
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