BARANGAY Ginebra coach Tim Cone sees Greg Slaughter flourishing with NorthPort following the blockbuster trade between both clubs that also sent Christian Standhardinger to the Gin Kings.
Cone said he believes Slaughter will thrive with his new team in the Batang Pier, expecting that his former player will now be the focal point of the team’s offense.
“I think that’s kinda the game Greg needs,” said Cone in an interview with The Chasedown on Saturday. “He needs the game to be built around him as opposed to being a complementary player. Given the opportunity over there where he is kinda on his own, not sharing the limelight with Japeth and Joe Devance, and other players, I think he is really going to come to his own.”
“In the meantime, Christian will come in and step into us and play the perfect role for us,” he added.
Last March, Ginebra bolstered its roster as it entered into a trade by giving up Slaughter, its first overall pick in 2013, in exchange for Standhardinger following the former’s sabbatical. The Gin Kings were coming off a championship in the 2020 Philippine Cup bubble although Slaughter was not part of the line-up.
Cone said he also had mixed feelings towards the trade since he was close to Slaughter.
“It’s always bittersweet because Greg Slaughter and I were very close,” said Cone, who added that he and Mark Caguioa were the first two people he called and spoke to individually when he was appointed as head coach of Barangay Ginebra in 2015.
“We wanted him to be our Shaq in the triangle offense and built the offense around them. He had a lot of misfortunes in terms of injuries. We weren’t really able to fully immerse him into what we wanted to do. By the time he was out of injuries and by the time we got him back in, we were already progressing to something else. He was always trying to catch up to what we are doing.”
“But there is no doubt about it, he was really a talented guy. He and I were very close. So when I heard about the trade, it was bittersweet,” said Cone.
Cone also said the trade between Slaughter and Standhardinger happened so swiftly.
“I know there was talk about it. There was talk about it long before, a year before but I know that the management kept saying ‘No, no, no, no, we are not interested in trading Greg.’ There were rumors out there for quite a while but management wasn’t willing to do anything at that time. It wasn’t until a week or two before the trade that I started to hear from management that the trade was getting traction, that they were starting to talk about it. It came pretty quickly,” Cone said.
The Barangay Ginebra coach said that while he is also saddened about letting go of Slaughter, he is also happy that a player like Standhardinger will definitely have a positive effect on the Gin Kings’ roster especially with the ballclub defending its Philippine Cup crown.
“But if you are going to trade a guy like Greg, getting a guy like Christian is probably the best thing you could get. Christian and I established a relationship in the Southeast Asian Games. He wanted to come hare and we wanted to have him,” said Cone.