The tough get going when the going gets tough. That’s a saying as old as time.
So, how many of our 12 Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) teams can tough it out amid the dreaded pandemic? Maybe, we have the same guess? Three?
With the highly contagious scourge knocking business down to its knees due to widespread lockdowns, money has become hard to come by. Commerce has been awfully thrown in disarray due to Covid-19 that it’d need a miracle for the country to mount a commercial bounceback in the year’s final five months.
Lucky are our PBA players, for they have benevolent bosses bulking up their monthly salaries uninterrupted. But up to when, nobody knows.
“We will see how long that (the coronavirus crisis) will continue because if it drags on for a second or third year, it will be very difficult,” said Wilfred Uytengsu, whose Alaska team has been with the 45-year-old PBA for 35 years now.
It was Uytengsu’s oblique way of saying he can only do so much?
“How do we... continue to run a team when our businesses are going to be down... some say 50 percent, and still have the same budget to run a PBA team?” Uytengsu told TV5’s “Sports Page.”
Continuing, Uytengsu said: “Fortunately for Alaska Milk, we are a necessity. People have to eat... I think we will be less affected.”
And so, is a car (Columbian Dyip), or paint (Rain or Shine?), or even perfume (Blackwater Elite) a necessity? Because all three can’t be eaten, does that make them vulnerable amid the hunger-laden plague?
'Northport’s pier service is a necessity because it helps sustain the nation’s economic supply chain.
'And who’ll throw out the window Meralco’s electric, NLEX’s road network going up North and TNT’s telecommunications system?
If you ask Alvin Patrimonio, Magnolia chicken is man’s best nutrient.
OK, don’t beer and gin from San Miguel and Barangay Ginebra, respectively, lift our spirits and, thus, they are required components to keep our sanity intact in these troubled times?
So, stop worrying, fellas.
The PBA would not have come this far if it was not made of sterner stuff.