The PBA should drop the twice-to-beat in every conference, and Tim Cone just showed why

The Governors' Cup has the quarterfinals right, and the other two PBA conferences have them wrong. Quarterfinals should be won, not arranged. A team that needs a safety net to get out of the first round has no business holding a trophy, and Tim Cone just showed what a coach looks like when he refuses to arrange anything.

In this conference, every quarterfinal is a best-of-five series. The first team to three wins goes through. The top seed in each group plays the fourth seed from the other group, the second seed plays the third, and nobody starts a game ahead.

The other two conferences do it differently. In the Philippine Cup and the Commissioner's Cup, the top seeds carry a twice-to-beat advantage. The lower seed has to win twice. The higher seed has to win once.

We know what that looks like, because it happened to Magnolia. On December 27, 2025, in the Philippine Cup quarterfinals, twice-to-beat TNT beat the Hotshots 118-109, and that was the series. In the Commissioner's Cup this year, Ginebra put Phoenix out the same way, in one game. One bad night, and a season was over. That is not a playoff series. That is a coin flip with a seeding chart attached.

The best-of-five still rewards the group stage, just honestly. NLEX won Group A at 9-3 and drew Phoenix, fourth in Group B at 5-5. Magnolia won Group B at 7-3 and drew TNT, fourth in Group A at 7-5. Rain or Shine drew Converge, and Ginebra drew San Miguel. Nobody got a free pass.

Sunday gave us the first proof. NLEX beat Phoenix 97-92 in Game 1, and it was a fight. NLEX led by 15 in the third quarter, and Phoenix got within two in the last minute. Deonte Burton and Robert Bolick both played through five fouls. Burton blocked Kai Ballungay, then blocked Gian Mamuyac's three that would have tied it. Ricci Rivero fouled out. It was Jimmy Alapag's first playoff win as a PBA head coach, and he earned it the hard way.

Under the Philippine Cup rules, that one win would have ended Phoenix's season on the spot. Now Phoenix is still alive, and NLEX has to win twice more.

Then there is Ginebra, which is really the same story. Going into Friday's last group game against Blackwater, Ginebra could have lost by up to 23 points and still made the quarterfinals, against NLEX instead of San Miguel. Cone would not do it.

"You fight your way into the playoffs and your reward is you have to play San Miguel. I think once you get into that thing where you start choosing, it's just like bad karma or whatever," Cone said.

"I've always felt that through the years, you play the game the way you're supposed to play, you play it hard and you play it to win, and then you let the cards fall where they may and you take care of business of what's in front of you," he said.

Ginebra beat Blackwater 101-96, finished third in Group B at 5-5 on a tiebreak over Phoenix, and the reward was San Miguel. Cone called it "consuelo de bobo," a fool's consolation, and took it anyway. He also said the choice was never much of a choice.

"I don't think there was much of a choice between NLEX and San Miguel in the first place. NLEX has been playing great, great basketball all conference long," Cone said. "They beat us in a practice game, so it wasn't really a team that we weren't excited to play either. And obviously, we are not excited to play San Miguel. But we'll take on all comers."

The other side deserves a fair hearing, because it is not foolish. A coach is hired to win championships, not admiration. If the bracket offers an easier road, taking it is doing the job. And the twice-to-beat exists for a reason: a team that wins the long elimination round should get something for it, and one extra life is a clear reward that every fan understands.

I do not buy it, for three reasons.

First, easier is a guess. Cone said it himself. NLEX, the supposedly softer draw, had beaten Ginebra in a practice game and had been playing great all conference. A team that picks its opponent by losing is betting its season on a scouting report.

Second, the best-of-five protects the better team more honestly than the twice-to-beat ever did. Three wins out of five is a truer test than one game. A top seed that cannot win three of five against a fourth seed was never getting through two more rounds.

Third, and this one matters most, a format that makes losing on purpose worth thinking about is selling a broken product. Fans pay for honest competition. The moment a team tries to lose, the ticket is a lie.

Prediction, labelled as one: at least one lower seed wins a series in these quarterfinals. Phoenix, TNT, Converge and Ginebra all have a real path to three wins, and the format gives them five games to find it. What would prove me wrong: all four higher seeds go through.

The PBA should keep the best-of-five in the Governors' Cup and bring it to the Philippine Cup and the Commissioner's Cup too. And the next coach tempted to lose his way into a better matchup should remember Cone's answer. If your team needs a twice-to-beat edge to get out of the quarterfinals, it was never winning the championship anyway.