Tim Cone Defends Scottie Thompson After Late Mistake

Scottie Thompson walked off the floor with a win, a +13 efficiency, and a storm raging online.

His late-game mistake — a five-second inbound violation with seven seconds left and Gilas Pilipinas clinging to an 82-81 lead over Jordan — instantly became fuel for critics. Social media pounced. The narrative wrote itself: same old questions about his shooting, about his fit as a point guard, about the turnover at the worst possible time.

Inside the Gilas camp, though, Tim Cone was having none of it.

Cone backs his blue-collar guard

Cone, who has seen Thompson at his best and worst in the PBA, doubled down on what he believes the veteran guard truly brings to the national team.

“People kind of give Scottie a hard time because he was not a great shooter, he’s not a true point guard, he’ll make a turnover here or there but they dismiss all the other stuff that he does,” Cone said, cutting straight into the heart of the criticism.

To Cone, Thompson’s value lives in the margins of the game — the places where cameras don’t linger and box scores don’t always tell the story.

“As we all know in the PBA, he does all the ‘Scottie things.’ He gets the rebounds, he gets the loose balls. He defends. He knows how to get teams to the execution,” Cone added.

That was on full display against Jordan.

From 18 down to under control

Gilas looked rattled early, staring at a 26-8 deficit and struggling to slow down Jordan’s perimeter threats. When Thompson checked in for the first time, the game shifted. Not with a flurry of threes or a highlight dunk, but with composure.

He chased down loose balls. He crashed the boards. He picked up Jordan’s top guards Jalen Harris and Freddy Ybrahim, making every catch and cut a little harder, every read a little slower. Gilas settled. The lead shrank. The game turned into a grind instead of a runaway.

Thompson didn’t need gaudy numbers to leave a mark; his +13 efficiency underscored how much better Gilas operated with him on the floor.

One mistake, one huge save

Then came the moment that ignited the backlash.

With the game on the line and Gilas trying to inbound, Thompson failed to get the ball in within five seconds. Whistle. Turnover. Jordan ball, seven seconds left, a chance to steal the win and bury Gilas under a wave of what-ifs.

The pressure finally told — but not on Thompson.

On the ensuing play, Kai Sotto came up with the game-saving block, erasing Jordan’s last-gasp attempt and sealing the 82-81 victory. The mistake stayed on the play-by-play sheet. The win stayed on the scoreboard.

Online, though, the discourse stayed fixed on Thompson.

Inside Gilas, a different view

Within the Gilas inner circle, the reaction was starkly different from the noise outside.

Gilas team manager and program director Alfrancis Chua took to social media to defend Thompson, pointing out the work that got buried under that one late error.

“Defense buong game sa best player ng Jordan, di niyo nakita?” Chua wrote, highlighting the assignment Thompson carried for most of the night.

Cone echoed that view, stressing that Thompson’s offensive game leans heavily on trust and teamwork.

“He will make big shots and get to the rim when he needs to but he really relies on his teammates a lot to make shots,” Cone said.

It’s a profile that doesn’t always satisfy highlight-hungry fans. It does, however, tend to satisfy coaches.

The paradox of Scottie Thompson

Thompson has long lived in that strange space between fan skepticism and coach admiration. Not a “true” point guard by traditional standards. Not a knockdown shooter. Prone, at times, to the kind of turnover that lights up timelines.

Yet he keeps finding his way into closing lineups, into crucial defensive assignments, into the trust of the men holding the clipboard.

Against Jordan, he embodied that paradox again: a single glaring mistake in the final seconds, wrapped around 30-plus minutes of the dirty work that helped drag Gilas back from 18 down and hold off a dangerous opponent.

The win belongs to the team. The block belongs to Sotto. The noise belongs to social media.

The faith, for now, still clearly belongs to Tim Cone — and that may matter most with bigger, tougher games still on the horizon.