I did not dare to write anything about the prospects of the Gilas Pilipinas’ chances in the recently concluded FIBA Asia Championships.
After having written critically about how the Philippine Men’s Basketball Team was organized and prepared for premier basketball tournaments, here it was at last.
A basketball without politics. A basketball without the wrangling between the then Basketball Association of the Philippines, and the Philippine Basketball Association. A basketball with the best players of the land in the team roster, none of whom cared about the future of their pro careers. A basketball where the team was given ample opportunity to prepare and adjust to the international style of play.
Everything was well in place for a successful campaign.
I told myself that with everything having been done, and if the Philippines still would not be able to climb to the top of the Asian basketball sky, then the country should just abandon spending time, money and effort on the sport and spend the good money on something else.
Well, after fifteen long years of bitching over the matter, I may have been proven right after all.
For a long long time, Philippine basketball continued to bask on the proven superiority of our style of play over the rest of Asia. The Philippine team did win third place in a World Basketball Championship in 1954, led by the greatest basketball player ever produced by the country, Carlos Loyzaga.
We became complacent and failed to notice that the rest of the basketball world had changed. The shock came in 1972 when we lost the basketball title in the Bangkok Asian Games.
Then the case of the overstaying, inefficient and bureaucratic basketball national association officials who insisted in holding on to power, even if they no longer had any constituent, except the equally inefficient, dysfunctional and direction-less regional directors.
In other words, all the reasons to fail were present, and even national pride was not enough to make the basketball politicians see things differently.
With the success of the Gilas campaign in the recently concluded FIBA Asia, let the past be the past, and serve as a lesson not to commit the same mistakes again in the future.
We have proven that we can still be the best in Asia, and let it remain that way, for the sake of our basketball crazy nation.
Nobody felt sad when Gilas went down to Iran. The mission was achieved the night before when the Gilas boys shot down arch nemesis South Korea. The entire country shed a tear or two of joy.
Winning the championship would have been nice, but had become irrelevant. By qualifying for the World Championship in Spain, Philippine basketball has been resurrected.
It was indeed a fine day for the Philippines.