WITH most of the Gilas players and coaching staff suspended, a hastily formed squad consisting of six mainstays from Rain or Shine and pickups from other teams plus Jordan Clarkson of the Cleveland Cavaliers are representing the Philippines in the men’s basketball tournament in the Asian Games in Indonesia. They clobbered Kazakhstan and lost to China by a hairline. Many are hoping for a decent finish in this year’s tourney.
For the first four Asian Games (1951, 1954, 1958 and 1962) the Philippine team was the champion. But in the editions that followed, the Philippine squads had dismal records, except in 1990 when the team took silver losing to China (90-76) and in 1998 with bronze.
When the Philippines was under the rule of the United States of America, basketball was introduced in the country with American instructors teaching the sport. The Philippines was dominant in basketball in the early years lording it over in the Far Eastern Championship Games by winning the gold medal beginning in 1913, in all but one of its ten editions.
In 1936, the Philippines made a fifth place finish in the Olympic Games, an honor never duplicated until the present. In the 1954 FIBA World Championship, the Philippines placed third. While the Philippine Basketball Association produced players of high caliber, the glory days of Philippine basketball in the international arena were things of the past.
Every now and then, politicians or businessmen would come forward to bankroll an all-star team still the efforts have failed, as other countries with naturally tall players and more professionally-run basketball programs continue to dominate the sport.
Why are Filipinos so obsessed with basketball? Firstly, it gets much media mileage in newspapers, radio and television and the players are promoted like movie stars. Secondly, it is entrenched not just in the schools but even in the remotest barangay where a basketball court is more important than a canteen. Thirdly, it is one of the cheapest sports that requires only three things: a ball, a goal and a vacant lot.
There is nothing wrong with basketball; it’s just that Filipinos should take a look at other sports where they have more chances of becoming a dominant force.
Or why not transform some of the traditional Filipino games such as siatong, patintero and batolata into discipline sports? Surely, we can be the world champions. In New Zealand where I reside, we’ve developed mechanics of these games to make these more manageable and time-bound.
The fifth edition of LingawDuwa, the Filipino Sporting Event of the Year, will be held on September 22 in Auckland, showcasing some of the best players who’ve developed techniques and strategies that have raised the quality of the games to a new level.