PHILLIPINE BASKETBALL: TIME TO FACE THE MUSIC
By Ed de la Vega, DDS
PhilBoxing.com
Thu, 24 Sep 2015
Since the era of Loyzaga, Mumar, Manulat, Flores, Salda?a and the 18 year-old Francisco ?Frank? Rabat, et al in the World Basketball Championships in 1954, the Philippines has yet to win again a decent placement in the international basketball competitions.
Yet, the country keeps on pinning its hopes for a miracle to happen and for the country to win a better spot than the bronze medal that the famed 1954 team won via a 67-63 win over Uruguay National Team.
But as the latest debacle in China where the Philippine team represented by Gilas Pilipinas succumb (75-73) to a newbie in Palestine indicates, we have no hope to better the results of 1954. With such performance may not even qualify for the Rio Olympics next year!
Zero, nada!
While it can be argued that we beat TeamUSA several times such as in the 34th Jones Cup in Taiwan; when Ron Jacob coached NCC-SMB beat TeamUSA in 1985 and the Chot Reyes led SMB beat USA Athletes in Action in 2007, those US Teams are really just fringe teams sent as a token of US representation. The bottom line is we never won anything significant in the true world stage like the Olympics and the World Championships except the 5th place finish in the 1936 Olympics- 79 years ago and the aforementioned 3rd place finish in the World Championships in 1954.
This may not sink in too well with the folks in Philippine basketball but it is what it is and it is time to recognize this fact and quit putting false hopes in the minds of the people. Our brand of basketball is only for ?local consumption?.
With apologies to my good friends Ronnie Nathanielsz and ?Dean? Quinito Henson, two die hard basketball fans and historians, and to the great benefactor, Manny V. Pangilinan, I dare say basketball in not an international game for Filipinos! It never was and it never will be. We need to understand that!
That is why its mind boggling to hear that the game is our ?national sport?. Who ever put that in the minds of the Filipinos must be nuts and never considered that
we can never match the physicality of players from top basketball nations like the USA let alone soccer-oriented countries like Spain, Brazil and Argentina.
Oh, we can beat up our hapless neighbors like Burma, Laos, Thailand and Indonesia but struggle against Taiwan and So. Korea and often times bow to powerhouse China. With such history, how can one expects us to be tops internationally?
In fact, even one of our heroes from the 1954 team is not pure Pinoy. Carlos Loyzaga, who was born in Occidental Mindoro is of Basque parentage.
Pure Pinoys can never be in the pinnacle of basketball if the gauge used is international level basketball. They are naturally ?smaller?. Don?t get me wrong, some of our present day kids are almost 7 footers. But they come far and in between and most that are that tall lack the ?bulk? for the rugged international basketball. Others simply don?t play competitive basketball because they know only a few succeed in the game. It is for these reasons that basketball head honchos in the country rely on ?naturalized imports? to supplement our inadequacies.
But that is just one of the reasons why we fail
Foremost other reason is stupid petty peculiarities.. How can we ever succeed when in many instances personal and business interests come first ahead of the welfare of the national team? I need not elaborate on this. I merely want to say- Hello SMB!
And, these peculiarities sometimes even lead to ?suppression? of freedom of speech.
Does the name ?Snow Badua? ring a bell?
Photo: The Philippine Smart-Gilas team that won the fringe Jones Cup basketball tourney in Taiwan in 2012.
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