Barangay Ginebra San Miguel rookie Sonny Estil seems to be doing something right. Two games into PBA Season 50, and it appears he has already cracked Tim Cone’s rotation, seeing the court for an average of 15 minutes and getting meaningful floor burn at that.
Estil has been making full use of those minutes, too, putting up 8.0 points and 4.5 rebounds on top of lots of energy on both ends. This effort isn’t lost on Cone himself, who’s looking like a big Estil fan so far this season. In fact, after Ginebra beat the TNT Tropang 5G on Wednesday, Cone spoke about the 11th pick of the PBA Season 50 Draft unprompted in the postgame presser, where he lauded his rookie’s energy and compared him to a young Mark Barroca.
“I’m just really excited about Sonny. I think he brings so much energy into the game,” Cone told reporters. “He kinda reminds me of a young Mark Barroca. When we first got Mark at Purefoods [now Magnolia Hotshots], he was all over the place and stumbling and falling and making crazy shots. He [Estil] really reminds me of Mark.”
This isn’t the first time Cone has spoke positively of Estil, as he had previously described the rookie as having “a lot of potential” after Ginebra drafted him.
The Estil of the Draft? Rookie Bringing Energy and All-Out Effort
Indeed, Sonny Estil has been full throttle for Ginebra in two games, providing a spark off the bench with his energy and hustle on both ends.
Against Magnolia, for instance, Estil had three offensive rebounds, each time swooping in out of nowhere a la Scottie Thompson. Against TNT, Estil matched up with All-Star RR Pogoy and more than held his own, getting two consecutive stops at one point as the veteran tried to post him up. This intense, pedal-to-the-metal approach has apparently won over Cone, who acknowledged that his rookie is “a lot of fun to watch.”
“You’d rather have a guy that’s going a hundred miles an hour and slide him down to 70, 80 miles an hour than have a guy who always goes 50 miles an hour and try to push him up…,” Cone explained. “We see some really big potential there. The energy he brings is a lot of fun to watch.”
With Ginebra in a nearly three-year championship drought, a spark plug like Estil could just be what the crowd darlings need to win another ‘chip.
