PATO Gregorio made a rather strong statement against the NBA after the league forbid Cleveland Cavaliers player Jordan Clarkson from playing in the Asian Games.
Pato, now with the Philippine Olympic Committee, said the “NBA broke the hearts of 100 million Filipinos.”
He added: “Your Philippine sports leaders worked ‘round the clock. So many sleepless nights. We were one clearance away.”
Such strong words. Problem is, two weeks before the NBA broke the hearts of 100 million Filipinos, Gregorio and the Samahang Basketball ng Pilipinas broke the hearts of 100 million Filipinos by saying it won’t send a team to the Asian Games.
I had hoped, of course, that Clarkson would get to play but I wasn’t surprised by the NBA’s denial. This isn’t football and Fifa, leagues like the NBA and the EuroLeague, whose clubs pays for the salaries of the super stars, have a bigger say on player availability for national team duty than their football counterparts. Just imagine the furor in football if, say, Manchester United prevents Pogba from playing for France in the qualifiers?
In basketball, the clubs and club owners get away with it and even if Fiba tried to pattern its World Cup qualification after Fifa’s international windows, it still wouldn’t get football-level cooperation from the clubs. For the Asian Games, the NBA even pointed out that its agreement with Fiba is only limited to its qualifiers, the World Cup and the continental games (Asian Cup), and the Asian Games isn’t part of it.
Some cried foul, of course, saying the league is allowing Zhou Qi of the Houston Rockets to play in the Asian Games. Oh, come on, are we that naive? It’s China, they get away with anything, West Philippine Sea included. If Google will bend to Chinese demands just to enter the Chinese market, the NBA can do so. Our being very vocal basketball fans on social media, of being the country where most of the NBA teams and players’ social med followers come from, mean squat to the league’s bottom line.
Still, what’s done is done. We will have no Jordan Clarkson but, at least, the silver lining to all this drama is that we are sure he will be available in the third round of qualifiers for the World Cup. Clarkson or not, we still have a team in the Asiad, one with ageless guys like James Yap and Asi Taulava. They might not be the Clarkson type, but these guys will bleed red, yellow and blue for the team, which is curiously being marketed as simply the Nationals and not Gilas Pilipinas.
Besides, Clarkson’s absence may mean the spotlight will also be shone on the other Pinoy athletes who will be seeing action in the Asian Games. Yeah, I know, basketball will also get the lion’s share of the limelight given our history, but still, another silver lining is that hard-working athletes who toil under the radar may get that recognition they deserve once the games get going.