Game 1 heroes Justin Brownlee and RJ Abarrientos during Game 1 of the 2026 PBA Commissioner’s Cup Finals between Barangay Ginebra Gin Kings and TNT Tropang 5G. –MARLO CUETO/INQUIRER.net
Many see a special RJ Abarrientos in his return to the PBA Finals—an enormous contrast from his two previous trips, when he was a rookie who often kept second-guessing things.
This time, Abarrientos looks more like a confident and secure sophomore who has emerged as arguably the team’s most important man and, doubtless, top-of-the-line in his position within the league.
Abarrientos finished with 24 points and 7 rebounds to assist the Gin Kings to a 102-100 victory over TNT on Wednesday in Game 1 of the PBA Commissioner’s Cup Finals at Smart Araneta Coliseum.
But even he had a mature outlook on his late-game heroics, where he knocked down two huge four-point shots that paved the way in which for Justin Brownlee’s game-winner.
“Those two four-point shots that I made are usually not sustainable, so we should be higher,” Abarrientos said, while also admitting that he has a variety of things to tidy up if he and his teammates wish to double their series edge in Game 2 on Friday.
On top of those things is his defense.
“Coach Tim (Cone) got mad at me,” Abarrientos said, noting how TNT erased an 18-point Ginebra lead and even went ahead courtesy of Rey Nambatac, the Finals Most Precious Player from last season’s Commissioner’s Cup Finals.
“My defense against Nambatac, especially on this Finals, is unacceptable. So I should be higher and I even have to embrace that,” Abarrientos said.
Abarrientos hit two four-pointers late—the primary gave Ginebra a one-point lead and the second put the Kings ahead, 100-97, with 20 seconds remaining.
“He hit some huge shots, we were down each times and got the leads on each shots, which were gigantic,” Cone said.
The Tropang 5G again tied the sport courtesy of a Roger Pogoy triple but Brownlee secured the win for the Gin Kings, hitting a jumper with six-tenths of a second remaining.
The midseason conference has turn out to be Abarrientos’ breakout campaign, one where the team and its faithful legion watched him flattening big shot after big shot from Ginebra’s opening task all through the hard-fought semifinal series with Rain or Shine.
He’s the league’s top local scorer at 21.4 points per game, hitting 49-percent of his shots, on top of three.7 rebounds, 5.0 assists and 1.3 steals through 19 games of the second conference.
His rise in the continued conference has also made Abarrientos the front-runner for the Best Player of the Conference award, which could only be a mere formality provided that other candidates from the early a part of the tournament, NLEX’s Robert Bolick and San Miguel Beer’s June Mar Fajardo, were eliminated within the quarterfinals.