By Rey Joble

THE KFC-Philippine Basketball Association Philippine Cup championship series isn’t just a battle among the marquee players, such as Alaska’s Willie Miller and LA Tenorio and Talk N Text’s Mac Cardona and Jimmy Alapag.

With the series now reduced to a best-of-three affair after the Tropang Texters salvaged a 100-98 victory in Game 4 Wednesday, the championship encounter has also turned out to become a fierce battle of coaching between two good friends—Tim Cone of Alaska Milk and Chot Reyes of Talk N Text.

After four grueling matches, both coaches split the series with Cone winning the first two and Reyes securing the last couple of matches.

Cone is the winningest mentor among active coaches today, with 11 titles, 12 if we include the 2003 Invitationals, where he defeated Reyes, then coaching Coca-Cola, in a best-of-three series, 2-1.

One more title for Alaska will technically put the Aces in the company of the fabled Crispa Redmanizers in second place with 13 PBA championships.

But Cone isn’t fascinated with records and numbers at this stage. What amused him was how his friend and counterpart from the Tropang Texters’ side was able to make some key adjustments in making the series quite more interesting than the usual.

“Chot has made some key adjustments in drawing his team’s main strength. They went small and that gave them big results,” said Cone, who is one game away from reaching the 600-win plateau, which was reached first by his idol Baby Dalupan, who has 601 wins. “We were able to adjust, but Jimmy Alapag bailed his team out of trouble.”

Reyes was drawing praises from Cone in their friendly rivalry. The two-time Coach of the Year and previous national team mentor put aside the first two setbacks in the series by doing his homework in the next two matches.