Baby Dalupan Award to Meralco, Really???
By Teodoro Medina Reynoso
PhilBoxing.com
Sat, 28 Sep 2024
Baby Dalupan.
I could not believe my eyes upon seeing the news runner on the television that the coaching staff of the Meralco team would be given the Baby Dalupan award for winning the franchise its first PBA championship.
I learned that it was the PBA Press Corps which would be giving the award. Still I found it awkward, ironic even.
In our GAB and Friends chatgroup, I loudly spoke my mind about the matter. I said it's ironic that Meralco would be given an award named after a bitter rival coach, one who the Reddy Kilowatts as the team was then known defeated for their first and last and only MICAA championship in the early 70s before the league folded up giving way to the PBA.
Somebody responded by providing me a Wiki information about the Baby Dalupan Award.
According to Wiki-
"The Baby Dalupan Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Coach of the Year Award is an annual Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) award given since the 1993 PBA season. The winner receives the Baby Dalupan Trophy, which is named since 1995 in honor of Dalupan, who won 15 championships in the PBA and led the Crispa Redmanizers to win its first Grand Slam in 1976. Unlike the traditional player awards, which is given by the league, this citation is awarded by the PBA Press Corps.
Since its inception, the award has been given to 13 different coaches. The most recent award winner of Baby Dalupan Trophy are the entire coaching staff of Meralco Bolts, led by head coach Luigi Trillo."
As I understood it, the members of the PBA Press Corps were merely continuing with a tradition of dispensing an award.
But I guess there's also no one among their members old enough to have seen the awkwardness and irony of it all given the names involved- Dalupan and Meralco- if one will go back to the dog eat dog nature of Philippine commercial basketball in the early 70s.
With the disbandment of Ysmael ending their long rivalry for supremacy of local basketball with YCO in the late 60s, emerged a new upstart team known as the Crispa Redmanizers of the Floro family. Danny Floro hired Virgilio "Baby" Dalupan, then coach of the powerhouse University of the East squad in the UAAP, to mentor their new team in the MICAA.
Dalupan taking the services of many of his UE stalwarts as Rudy Kutch, Ompong Soriano, Willy Haba Haba Abbarientos, Johnny Revilla, Danny Picache and Rey Franco and backstopped by the high scoring duo of Adriano Papa and Danilo Florencio built Crispa into a powerful champion team.
Meanwhile, many from the disbanded Ysmael team like Robert Jaworski, Alberto Big Boy Reynoso and Jaime Mariano radiated towards the then also new Meralco squad of the Lopezes coached initially by Tito Eduque, known for his all white attire.
YCO with Elias Tolentino, Renato Reyes, Edgardo Gomez, Freddie Webb and new acquisitions Marte Samson and Mike Bilbao was still around but not as strong as the two new kids on the block, Crispa and Meralco which immediately proceeded to establish a sanguine rivalry of their own.
Those who were old enough, though many were still young like this writer, were witnesses to how bitter and at many times literally sanguine the Crispa and Meralco rivalry was, with not only players but their supporters going at it even in regular games!
Who would forget the Crispa-Meralco game that led Jaworski and Reynoso to maul the two referees for perceived biased officiating? A serious offense that led to their lifetime suspension by the BAP, a suspension lifted through the efforts of then Presidential Assistant Guillermo Gimo de Vega in time for 1973 ABC championship hosted by the Philippines.
The rivalry was even accentuated in the import laden tournaments where Crispa reigned supreme for years due to their then still young and very athletic 6'8" American reinforcement by the name of Tom Cowart who reigned on both the offensive and defensive board.
How good was Cowart? When Czech champion club team Auto Skoda visited for a series of matches against the import reinforced MICAA squads, they ran roughshod over every team except Crispa who demolished them by more than twenty points!
Feats like those only enhanced the reputation of Crispa and the brilliance of Baby Dalupan as coach painting them with a big target mark especially by Meralco who would replace Eduque with former cage hero Lauro The Fox Mumar.
Desperate to break Crispa's shroud of invincibility and win Meralco's first MICAA championship, Mumar knew he had to outwit Dalupan and neutralize, if possible diminish the effect of Cowart.
That he did by hiring the league's first true behemoth in seven foot Bob Presley who went on to use his height and length to cut down Cowart to size making the championship game virtually an all Filipino affair.
A coaching brilliance of its own indeed!
The Reddy Kilowatts won its only MICAA championship in the 1971 MICAA Open, defeating Crispa, 65–58, before a banner crowd at the Araneta Coliseum.
This was also Meralco's last basketball title before disbandment with the government takeover of Meralco in 1972 with the declaration of martial law.
Now, who could fault this writer for questioning the soundness, sanity even, of the rationale of giving award to Meralco, albeit already in the PBA, named after the coach its predecessor defeated for its first and last major championship?
The author Teodoro Medina Reynoso is a veteran boxing radio talk show host living in the Philippines. He can be reached at teddyreynoso@yahoo.com and by phone 09215309477.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Teodoro Medina Reynoso.
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