MANILA, Philippines — His job security under threat, import Jordan Adams responded with a monster performance for San Miguel Beer.
Reactivated after yielding the floor to Sheldon Mac in the previous match, Adams turned on beast mode and punched in 49 big points to anchor SMB’s 139-127 romp over Phoenix in the PBA Governors’ Cup last night.
Adams lit up the Smart Araneta Coliseum’s scoreboard with buckets from inside and out as he set the tone for the Beermen’s third straight victory and 5-2 overall in Group B.
“Welcome back, Jordan,” SMB coach Jorge Gallent told Adams by way of starting the post-game presscon.
A man on a mission, Adams knocked down both his two attempts from the fourth-point arc while making four of his seven tries from the three-point line to highlight his scoring rampage on Friday the 13th.
He laced it up with 11 rebounds, three assists and two steals – all the while committing just one turnover in 37 minutes of action.
“I just went out there and played hard and tried to get the win for my team,” said Adams, who was backed up by CJ Perez (23 points, seven assists), June Mar Fajardo (22-11-6) and Marcio Lassiter (16), whose five treys put him only three away from dislodging Jimmy Alapag from No. 1 position in all-time three-pointers made (1,250).
Gallent explained that they experimented by bringing in Mac in place of Adams in their 119-114 win over NLEX last Wednesday. Mac posted 16 points but only had one rebound, one assist, one steal and one block and the team deemed it best to deploy Adams anew.
“We just wanted to try out 1-2-3-4 guy. Unfortunately, it backfired,” said Gallent. “What’s nice about Jordan, he was professional enough to stay with us and to play with us again. His game speaks about him being a really great import.”
Adams stressed this was no “statement game.”
“Just got to keep winning, that’s all that matters to me,” he said.