Hong Kong Eastern power forward Hayden Blankley said his current team is a totally different ball club compared to the Bay Area Dragons that went on to finish a strong second place behind eventual Commissioner’s Cup champion Barangay Ginebra during the 2023 PBA season.
The 6-foot-9 former stalwart of West Texas A&M noted that the Dragons that he played with during the PBA’s 2022-23 season had a number of veterans that played in the Chinese Basketball Association, compared to the HK Eastern players who mostly competed in Hong Kong’s domestic league.
“It’s a very different team. As you guys know, the Bay Area team was blessed with some Mainland Chinese players that were all probably six and above, some seven-footers. This team, not so much,” Blankley said, shortly after HK Eastern hammered Phoenix, 102-87, to kick off its 2024-25 PBA Commissioner’s Cup debut with a big win.
“And the experience level too, like the Bay Area team had a lot of CBA veterans, and I guess you could say that might be considered a higher level, and our team is mainly just Hong Kong locals who are used to playing within the Hong Kong league. So there’s that difference,” he added.
Blankley knows what he is talking about, having been part of that Dragons side that pushed the Gin Kings to an epic seven-game title series and a record-setting crowd of 54,589 that witnessed Game 7 at the Philippine Arena in Bocaue, Bulacan.
The 24-year-old Blankley added that he expects PBA teams to really push HK Eastern to the limit.
“Whilst we still have a little bit of size advantage at some positions, it’s pretty comparable to the Philippines, so now it’s a lot more competitive on that end. The Filipino teams can definitely challenge us any night and not have to worry about us being just bigger or anything like that,” said Blankley, who dropped a PBA career-high 47 points, including 10-of-13 triples, in Bay Area’s 126-96 win over Rain or Shine in the quarterfinals.
Although he is one of the youngest in the second foreign squad to play in the Commissioner’s Cup the last three years, Blankly said he, along with former Bay Area players Kobey Lam and Glen Yang, serve as leaders of the team so to speak since they are the only ones with PBA experience, other than former PBA import Cameron Clark.
Clark is Hong Kong’s reinforcement for this mid-season conference.
“I think everyone’s ready for this kind of challenge. Some of (them, it’s) their first time playing outside. Besides the (EASL) game we’ve played so far in Japan, this is some of the guys’ first experience outside of Hong Kong and playing in different competitions. So props to them for being willing to learn and ready to adjust and stuff,” he said.
Eastern had to go through a “feeling-your-way” kind of situation during the first half, before Blankley instigated the foreign squad’s second half breakaway, firing 15 of his 18 points in that stretch en route to the 15-point debut win.
HK Eastern will have little rest as the team returns to action on Friday to face opening day winner Converge at 7:30 p.m at the Ninoy Aquino Stadium.
