WHILE admitting there will be growing pains, player agent Marvin Espiritu is convinced the PBA’s new unrestricted free agent rule will only make the pro league better.
“You really cannot blame someone who is just going after greener pastures. It happens in every industry,” Espiritu said recently on Radyo5 92.3 News FM’s Power and Play program hosted by former PBA Commissioner Noli Eala.
“But going back to the PBA, I think this would be beneficial both ways overall,” he added.
The rule was set during the time of the late former chairman Ely Capacio in 2014, with the league seeing it will benefit players who want to suit up for other teams at the end of their contracts.
Big man Rodney Brondial and playmaker John Pinto chose to exercise their rights and leave Alaska and Meralco and instead move to San Miguel Beer and Ginebra, respectively.
Brondial and Pinto declined their respective former teams’ two-year extension offers for three-year pacts with their new squads.
Versatile forward Matt Ganuelas-Rosser, who used to play for Terrafirma, signed with TNT last Friday, a team where he also had a three-year stint from 2014-2017.
Brondial, Pinto, and Ganuelas-Rosser all belonged to the talent-laden 2014 Draft Class bannered by Ginebra star guard Stanley Pringle.
The son of veteran player agent Danny said Asia’s first play-for-pay league should just roll with the punches as learning curves are expected to come.
“We just need to, maybe as we go along, plug some holes into it,” Espiritu, who co-founded the Espiritu Manotoc Basketball Management (EMBM), said.
