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Tuesday, December 03, 2002
Oyson: 6-foot guards, a pipe dream
By Manuel N. Oyson Jr.
Counter Punch
Now, the newest basketball development gimmick in town is the so-called Six-Footers Basketball League. Or SBL. It is to be unveiled next month. As the name implies, it will be limited only to players 18 years and below, standing six feet and above. Sorry, but no team from outside Metro Manila will be participating. The Cebu Schools Athletic Federation Inc. (Cesafi) will thus not be represented by a band of six-footers under 18.
Besides, as a news report, The Manila Standard said, the field will be composed of six teams from each of the major college tournaments in the country, such as the UAAP, NCAA, NCRAA, Colleges and Universities Sports Associations and the National Athletic Association of Schools, Colleges and Universities. The sixth team will be the RP Youth squad. There is no mention of Cesafi or of the Negros Basketball Association (NBA) of Bacolod city.
POTENTIAL? Businessman Bert Lina, the innovator of this new basketball game, explained that it will help the Philippines grow to its full potential (as a basketball power?). Lina, who is also the chairman of Air 21 and the owner of FedEx Express team in the PBA, has always maintained that for Filipino players to be more competitive in the international scene, their six-foot-and-above players who usually play the forward or center posts, must learn to play like point guards.
Lina believes that if tall players can be trained to play the point, they can shift to any position with ease. By this innovation, he expects that we may have 6-foot-6 or 6-foot-8 centers who are as shifty and agile as point guards. Imagine Bonel Balingit (6-foot-9) or Zandro Limpot (6-foot-5) moving like Johnny Abarrientos in the paint. “The mere thought gives me goose bumps,” the Manila Standard quoted him.
AMNESIA. The only kink here is that 6-foot-6 Jean Marc Pingres, the so-called first prototype of Lina’s experiment is already 19-years-old. That means he can no longer qualify for the first SBL. Besides, his citizenship may later be questioned, if not in the Senate, may be in other forums, by the PBA Players Union, which has recovered from amnesia and remembered President Carlos P. Garcia’s “Filipino First” doctrine of 40 years ago.Although he has French roots, his mother is a Filipina. Pingres used to play for Cebuana Lhuillier before the MBA was disbanded. It is my thinking that Lina’s experimentation is to prepare these tall players for the PBA and perhaps, the national teams to the succeeding Asian Games. By then, he hopes that point guards will no longer be only 5-foot-9 or 5-foot-11 but even six feet tall and above.
POINT GUARDS. Elmer “Boy” Cabahug and Alfonso Solis were point guards in their PBA days. So were Yoyoy Martirez and Dodie Miego. And Danny Basilan, Boy Adolfo Jake Rojas, Freddie Webb, Willie Generalao, Rudy Valera, Atoy Co, Samboy Lim, Arturo Valenzona and many others. They are under six-feet on bare feet. In the innovation of Lina, the playing, sudden-shifting style has to be developed early so that when a game situation calls for a switch from power forward to point guard in an instance, the coach does not have to scratch his head whom to pick from his bench.
Let Bert Lina have his pipe dream. Six-foot guards may one day be a principal feature in PBA tournaments. But only for their amusement and entertainment value. His thinking that six-foot point guards may be the answer to the country’s quest for international competitiveness in basketball is one bollixed-up idea. The natural point guards under six feet will feel being discriminated against under this new set up. Besides, we just do not have enough materials for such a purpose.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “To dismiss the Senate investigation on the allegedly fake Fil-Ams in the PBA as a waste of time and money better spent on other problems of the country, is to turn a blind eye on injustice, to apply a double standard on evil, or at least, alleged evil.” – Paul J. Taneo, Sun.Star sports editor
(e:mail: mno@sunstar.com.ph) |
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