It is mental fatigue, not physical exhaustion, that has been the biggest obstacle for the San Mig Super Coffee Mixers in their quest to complete a Grand Slam in the ongoing PBA season, says head coach Tim Cone.
Some would think that the schedule – which saw the team kick off their Governors Cup title defense less than a week after winning the Commissioners Cup – would have taken its toll physically on the Mixers, and while Cone does not deny this, he insists that the mental fatigue is a bigger issue.
"The physical fatigue is there," Cone said on ANC's "Hardball" Wednesday night. "I think it's more that these guys are in incredible shape. You just don't realize what they go through to get themselves in shape."
"Guys like James Yap, PJ Simon, Marc Pingris – these guys, they really come out there and work," he said.
Cone explained that for him and his players, mental fatigue, boredom and routine can take its toll, especially given the quick turnaround from one conference to another.
"The one thing that's nice about the turnaround is that you do continue your momentum that you've created in the finals," he said. "The problem is, in the finals, there’s so much awareness and attention."
"People are talking about it, the crowds are big, management'’s all on you, and the players are just at a really high attention and activity level," he added.
But once the finals are over, and the elimination round starts again, that attention and activity level goes down, and it takes some time before the players rise to that level again, Cone explained.
"(When) you play your first game of the eliminations, it's like, the crowd is small, management's not paying you attention anymore, the guys are talking about their girlfriends, what they got in the last conference… that's the difficult part," said Cone.
"From being really high up, and then suddenly playing at a much lower emotional level, and trying to get that back up – that’s the difficult part," he stressed.
Thus, a key task for Cone and the San Mig Coffee coaching staff is to keep the players “interested and motivated,” especially with nine others teams determined to keep them from achieving their goal of a fourth consecutive title.
"For other coaches, because they haven't won, they have a goal in mind, and what they're gonna do," said Cone.
"But we're kind of in a different level, where we're just trying to find things that we’'ll do," he added, revealing that they have tried doing yoga at practice, and even allowed his players to take the day off on Wednesday.
"It is really unusual for me to give a day off, but I gave one today," he said. "That's really unusual, but desperate times call for desperate measures.”"
The Mixers are currently in a four-way tie for third place in the Governors' Cup, along with Alaska, Air21, and their Commissioner's Cup victims, the Talk N Text Tropang Texters.
They will try to break that deadlock tomorrow when they play the GlobalPort Batang Pier at the SMAR Araneta Coliseum.
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