One is eyeing to restore its dynasty while the other is hoping to meet its long-coveted destiny.

It’s a power struggle for the 2024 PBA Philippine Cup crown as defending champion San Miguel meets its new challenger in Meralco in the best-of-seven finals which will begin on Wednesday, June 5, at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.

Setting aside the pleasantries and formalities during the PBA Finals press conference presented by Bingo Plus on Monday, June 3, at the Crowne Plaza in Ortigas, both camps are anticipating a thrilling championship series – far from the general expectations from the fans which heavily favored the defending titlists.

It’s quite reasonable especially with the wealth of title experience that the SMB franchise has, now marching to its 45th finals appearance and gunning for 10th title in the crown jewel of PBA conferences.

The Beermen, for one, are also looking for their first consecutive all-Filipino titles since their five-peat in from 2015 to 2019.

“We’re just gonna try hard. We’re gonna play hard. We’re gonna have fun and compete. I know we are playing a team that is full of energy that likes to play defense. It’s also well-coached; we just have to match their energy to get a chance at winning the championship,” said SMB head coach Jorge Gallent. 

On the other hand, the Bolts are only on their fifth finals appearance although they remained searching for their first PBA title after losing all of their first four against the Barangay Ginebra – the same team they defeated to finally earn their breakthrough appearance in the all-Filipino finals.

The goal doesn’t seem out of reach for Meralco, however, especially being the lone team that defeated a dominant SMB in the eliminations. For the Bolts, they already denied SMB a shot at historic elimination sweep.

“We believe in our guys. Coach Nenad (Vucinic) has been preaching that. We really believe that we have enough. It’s not going to be easy. We don’t know what's gonna come out there. We know what San Miguel is about but we are excited to be here and it’s gonna be a great series,” said Meralco head coach Luigi Trillo.

While the loss showed some semblance of vulnerability for the Beermen especially after also absorbing a shocking defeat to the eighth seeded Terrafirma Dyip to begin the playoffs, SMB has since then regained its bearing and went on to sweep a promising Rain or Shine team in the semifinals behind June Mar Fajardo, Marcio Lassiter and Don Trollano.

Meralco’s journey to the finals, though, isn’t entirely easy as it needed the win against SMB in the eliminations to stay in the race for the playoffs. The crucial win catapulted them to the third seed where they dispatched NLEX in two games.

That set up the clash against Ginebra which Meralco needed seven games to defeat amd notch their first best-of-seven series win in franchise history, on top of the team’s breakthrough finals stint.