REVISITING GINEBRA–TERRAFIRMA TRADE

HOW many championships has Barangay Ginebra won since trading Christian Standhardinger, Stanley Pringle and a first-round pick (third overall) in the 2024 PBA Draft in exchange for Terrafirma Dyip’s Stephen Holt, Isaac Go and a first-round pick (10th overall)?

Zero. Wala. None. Nada. Nichts. Awan.

Nearly two years after that fateful draft-day trade, the most popular team in Asia’s first play-for-pay league is still searching for its 16th championship — trailing only the San Miguel Beermen’s 30 titles in the Philippine Basketball Association.

I get it. Standhardinger and Pringle were getting long in the tooth at the time of the swap, and Ginebra head coach Tim Cone’s patience with the former was already wearing thin.

It also helped that Cone had the chance to draft a potentially transformative point guard with the third overall pick — and that’s exactly what the Gin Kings did in selecting RJ Abarrientos.

However, aside from landing the nephew of Cone’s favorite point guard and PBA Hall of Famer Johnny Abarrientos — who would go on to win 2024 Rookie of the Year — the returns on Holt and Go have been somewhat tepid.

As of late December 2025, Holt is averaging 14.2 points, 6.3 rebounds and 2.9 assists for Ginebra. While respectable, those numbers reflect a reduced offensive role compared to his breakout run with Terrafirma, where he posted 17.0 points, 6.9 rebounds and 5.5 assists. Holt’s current output places him closer to a secondary option rather than the all-around initiator he once was.

In a way, the 6-foot-4 former Saint Mary’s shooting guard has become a 3-and-D player in Cone’s system. Still, like Gray — who buried three ice-in-his-veins free throws to send Game 2 of the quarterfinals against the Converge FiberXers to overtime — credit is due to Holt for hitting the game-winning triple in that same contest, which sent the Gin Kings into the semifinals against the Beermen, a series Ginebra eventually lost in six games.

Go, meanwhile, remains largely outside any fair statistical evaluation. Acquired in the same trade, he has appeared in only seven games for Ginebra after suffering a serious knee injury early in his stint, effectively removing him from the team’s on-court calculus.

Before essentially retiring, Standhardinger averaged 16.5 points, 9.9 rebounds and 5.0 assists for Terrafirma in the 2025 Commissioner’s Cup, providing interior scoring, playmaking and rebounding that would have addressed multiple needs for Ginebra. His numbers compare favorably not only with Go — whose contribution was curtailed — but also with Ginebra’s frontline rotation as a whole.

Pringle, though no longer in his prime, still posted 15.0 points, 3.5 rebounds and 4.7 assists on a per-game basis in his first and only season with the Terrafirma Realty Development Corp. franchise, offering shot creation and late-game decision-making.

The former Penn State guard, owner of arguably the PBA’s meanest crossover, later moved on to the Rain or Shine Elasto Painters, where he averaged a modest 4.5 points, 1.0 rebound and 1.7 assists in six games last conference.

The only clear way to argue that the 2024 draft-day trade was a win for Ginebra is that it delivered Abarrientos.

In his rookie 2024-2025 season, the 5-foot-11 spitfire averaged 12.7 points, 3.6 assists and 2.8 rebounds across his first two conferences. By late 2025, he had elevated his production to 17.5 points per game through 19 outings, establishing himself as a primary scoring option.

His development peaked on Dec. 25, 2025, when he dropped a career-high 35 points against Converge. He was later named PBA Press Corps Player of the Week after averaging 27.5 points, 3.5 assists and 2.0 steals during the Dec. 25–29 stretch.

That draft’s 10th pick, Mark Nonoy, meanwhile, averaged 11.7 points, 5.6 assists, 2.9 rebounds and 1.6 steals for Terrafirma while shooting 50.0 percent on two-point attempts in 25.3 minutes per game in the just-concluded Philippine Cup.

Beyond the controversial 2024 trade, other Ginebra deals have also come under renewed scrutiny, albeit to a lesser extent.

The Arvin Tolentino-Jamie Malonzo swap continues to look lopsided in hindsight. Tolentino averaged 22.4 points, 5.7 rebounds and 2.4 assists in the 2025 Commissioner’s Cup for NorthPort Batang Pier, winning Best Player of the Conference while establishing himself as a high-volume scorer with reliable outside shooting.

Malonzo, meanwhile, averaged 14.8 points, 6.1 rebounds and 3.2 assists in his last full PBA stint before leaving for Japan’s B.League, where he was released after only a handful of games.

Although both players eventually opted to play overseas — Tolentino in Korea and Malonzo in Japan — Tolentino appears, in retrospect, to have been the cleaner fit for Ginebra, particularly due to his perimeter shooting, scoring efficiency and local roots.

Malonzo, despite redeeming himself at the most recent Southeast Asian Games, was no longer the same player after his latest injury. Off-court issues — including the Bonifacio Global City incident ahead of the Philippines’ hosting of the 2023 FIBA World Cup — further disrupted his development.

The Gray-Javi Gomez de Liano trade also remains a point of contention. Gomez de Liano averaged 16.4 points, 5.7 rebounds and 2.2 assists in his last full conference with Terrafirma and has continued to provide scoring with Magnolia, averaging around 14 points per game in the ongoing Season 50 Philippine Cup.

Gray’s numbers with Ginebra underscore his role as a rotation contributor rather than a primary option. Through 18 games in the 2025-2026 season, he averaged 6.8 points, 2.6 rebounds and 1.3 assists while shooting 32.8 percent from three-point range — useful depth, but limited offensive impact compared to Gomez de Liano’s output elsewhere.

In fairness, the Moorpark College product has not been the same since suffering an ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) injury in July 2023, one that left him a shell of his former self.

Taken together, the expanded statistical picture and the proverbial eye test reinforce a growing perception — beyond injuries and system fit, Ginebra may have been better off not trading away its original pieces in exchange for the “newest and shiniest toys.”

While championships ultimately define franchises, the numbers continue to raise questions about whether the Gin Kings consistently extracted maximum value from their recent trades. Outside of RJ, methinks — not really.

2026-01-20T16:14:43Z