PBA: Chot Reyes gives Poy Erram 'piece of my mind' in heated Game 5 timeout moment

Poy Erram got a bit too emotional again in the PBA Commissioner's Cup Finals. PBA Images

By Ivan Saldajeno

QUEZON CITY—The emotions ran high on TNT again in Game 5 of the PBA Commissioner's Cup Finals against Ginebra.

Coach Chot Reyes called a timeout with 7:28 left in the third quarter in the middle of what eventually became a 10-0 run by the Gin Kings that tied the game up at 47-all.

When he called out Poy Erram for some errors he made during the Ginebra run, that was where tension rose.

Erram threw the towel given to him by the TNT bench after he seemingly lost his cool, and Reyes did not like how Erram reacted to what he said that he walked out of the team huddle.

Some other Tropang Giga players like Kelly Williams tried to pacify Erram before Rondae Hollis-Jefferson called on the players late into the heated timeout to get their acts together.

TNT eventually kept the game close, but the team lost steam in the final four and a half minutes as Ginebra walked away a 73-66 winner to the delight of most of the 12,447 fans at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.

When asked about the heated huddle, Reyes said that his hard words at Erram were his way of saying he did not like what was happening to him.

"I just got fed up with all the antics, so I let him have a piece of my mind. Kung hindi ko siya mapagsabihan, eh di siya ang mag-coach ngayon," Reyes said.

On the other hand, Hollis-Jefferson understood why the said timeout was so tense.

"It kind of took care of itself. They knew the importance of the game. At the end of the day, we all are competitive. We all want to win. I think they realized that, and I was like, 'Yo! We got to do it together.' Everybody else was saying the same thing. We all said, 'Let's stick together and do it as a team,'" he said about the player-only huddle.

Erram simply walked out of the arena with a towel covering his head as he was visibly disappointed with the result.

It was not the first time Erram and Reyes got into a verbal tussle in the series as they too had one in Game 2 exactly a week ago.

For two straight Sundays, the emotional Tropang Giga fell short against the Gin Kings.

However, TNT, with two full days to recover physically and emotionally, bounced back in Game 3, and with the series having another two-day gap, the team might need it to pull off a masterful Game 6 win to force a rubber match.

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