It can’t get any better than this. Jorge Gallent is euphoric, for sure. Wrapped in joyful frenzy.
Who wouldn’t be?
As the newly minted coach of powerhouse San Miguel Beer, Jorge Gallent perhaps can’t believe his eyes seeing his boys heeding every bit of his coaching style.
He is on a roll. Four straight wins in his first four games since he replaced longtime SMB mentor Leo Austria. Very few coaches can craft that luxury in so short a time.
But Jorge Gallent has pedigree. He belongs to a family of sports greats. His father used to be one of the country’s best jai-alai players.
I used to down bottles of beer with his Dad (George) at the Rizal Memorial Café, the famous joint from just across the iconic Rizal Memorial Coliseum at Vito Cruz, Manila.
Long before the Philippine Basketball Association games were held at the Araneta Coliseum, Rizal Memorial Coliseum was the mecca of basketball.
There wasn’t a basketball day then that we didn’t load up with the foamy brew before and after covering a basketball match, including UAAP and NCAA games.
Our drinking sessions then would include my longtime pal Recah Trinidad, the late baseball legend Boy Codiñera, and Fr. Edgar Martin (+), the enigmatic adviser of the late Lito Puyat, the longtime president of the defunct Basketball Association of the Philippines.
I’m glad to learn that the handsome George the jai-alai star with matinee idol looks is still very much around, enjoying the fruits of his stardom in a sport famously dubbed as the game of a thousand thrills.
And I’m pretty sure that George stands proud today to see his son Jorge with a wondrous single-digit handicap in golf blossom into a full-fledged coach on the nation’s grandest basketball stage.
After almost a trouble-free ride in his first three games that saw the Beermen prevail by a whopping winning average of 20 points, Jorge Gallent survived his most acid test thus far when he carved out a 100-98 escape act against Magnolia on Sunday.
That was a big scare, sort of like a cruel initiation in a Greek-letter fraternity, that when Jorge the son passed it, he got applause—the loudest of which, definitely, came from George the father. Uwaa!