[a2] San Mig not resting on laurels, taps veteran NBA coach Tom Newell to clean up game From: Richard Dy October 12, 2014, 07:33 pm TIM Cone likes to have someone from the outside looking in as far as San Mig Super Coffee’s game is concerned. And he feels veteran NBA coach Tom Newell is perfect for the job. A season after winning the rare grand slam, Cone is not about to rest on his laurels as he tapped the services of Newell to serve as ‘fresh eyes’ for the Mixers going to the coming new season of the PBA. Cone said he’s been ‘overly familiar’ with the triangle system that he wants Newell to pinpoint the things he missed with the team the past season. “He’s (Newell) not here to invent the wheel. He’s not gonna change our triangle or things the way we do defense, but what he’s gonna do is he’s gonna clean us up,” Cone told Spin.ph following the team’s weekend practice. The 56-year-old Cone, the winningest coach ever in the 40 years of Asia’s first ever play-for-pay league, said Newell came over to help the Mixers become sharper and more fundamentally sound as a team. “He’s gonna make us more precise in what we do, on the fundamentals, on passing, cutting, and footwork. He has fresh eyes, he’s come in but he hasn’t seen us play,” explained Cone. “When we do a pin down, and we’re not doing the proper footwork on the pin down, I kinda let it go over time because I’ve seen it so many times. But he comes in, spots it right away, so he corrects it and when we started correcting it, we all start to getting better,” he added. Although the Mixers have yet to win after their first seven games in the preseason, Cone believes they are just ‘on schedule’ as far as preparing for the coming season is concerned. “(Am I) upset about what we’re doing now? No, I say we’re on schedule,” he said. “We’re always a slow starting team, but it doesn’t mean I like being a slow starting team, it’s just that historically, we are,” added Cone. The San Mig coach said the team is preparing for a tough schedule to open the season, beginning with its season opener against Alaska on October 22, followed by San Miguel Beer (October 26), GlobalPort (October 31) and Barangay Ginebra on November 9. Read more at: spin.ph/basketball/pba/news/tom-newell-tim-cone-san-mig-preseason-pba-basketball-philippines-2014 Follow Us: @spinph on Twitter | spin.philippines on Facebook
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 12:42:07 +0000