The Good, Bad & Ugly

If you’re a fan of Philippine basketball, this past week had to be a strange mix of the good, the bad and the ugly.

So where do we start? The good news is that once and for all (and for nth time), the FIBA, basketball’s international organization for basketball, has officially recognized the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas (SBP) as the country’s official managers for the sport. This official stamp was needed after the “ugly” act of the BAP continuously questioning the authority of the SBP (via email and letters) before the FIBA. The irony of it all is that the FIBA gave weight to all these emails, thus the need to call a special commission-cum-investigation among the FIBA, SBP and BAP that took place in Switzerland earlier this week. But another bad and ugly sight (or no sight) was the absence of the BAP panel in the meeting that was actually put up due to their own complaints. It’s like having an accuser missing his biggest day in court when he has the chance to pin down his prime suspect.

If the BAP was out to embarrass itself, it did a great job by not showing up at the Geneva meetings. But I can guaranty you that this won’t be the last we’ll hear from them. Graham Lim will have more Aces up his sleeves and will make another run at taking over. Abangan. In the end, I just hope that there’ll finally be a closure out of all this so basketball can move on. The BAP, with its 70 plus years of existence, had the opportunity to run the sport, but the only thing they drew were more shaking of heads and the non-support of the country’s biggest stakeholders. If the BAP had managed the sport correctly, they would’ve been on top up to now. Let’s welcome the change and should the BAP want to act as an “opposition” party to the SBP leadership, they’re fee to do so. The only chance for them to take over is if the SBP fails miserably in its programs and lose the support of the PBA, PBL, UAAP, NCAA and other stakeholders.

Then there’s the recent Jones Cup outing of the Philippine team that’s preparing for the more important FIBA-Asia Cup in August. Losing to the likes of Lebanon and Jordan looked “ok,” but losing to Japan and Korea were “interesting,” to say the least. Over-all, it’s tough to gauge the team’s performance. First things first. What was the team’s main goal in playing in the Jones Cup? Was the team there to win it all? Or to do something else? If you read between the lines of all the news reports coming from Taiwan , it looked like Coach Yeng Guiao treated the games more like pre-season tune-up games preparing for something bigger down the road. Losing is always part of preparing and fine-tuning a team for a big tournament in the future. The big question now is whether or not it was the right thing to do. The other question that will also be asked is if the Philippines has a legitimate (a.k.a. realistic) chance to become Asia ’s best once again. China, Iran, Lebanon, Qatar and Jordan have proven that they are the best in the continent. Korea, Japan and the Philippines will be hard-pressed to match up with them. But then again, we’ll find out really soon at the FIBA Asia Championship in August where the top teams move on to the World Championship in 2010.

All this leads me back to the one thing that the SBP should be working on to completely take BAP out of the picture. Since the SBP is so convinced about its dream to become Asia ’s top basketball power in the future, I’d like to see the concrete programs being laid out for this. So far, the most visible program has been the formation of the “future” Philippine team for the 2012 London Olympics. It has nothing to do with the current pro-laced Philippine team, as it’s composed of what’s supposed to be the future of Philippine basketball. Cebu ’s Greg Slaughter is part of the team, while June Mar Fajardo is also being pursued to sign up. While I don’t think we’ll be able to make it to the 2012 Olympics since two years won’t be enough to form a really competitive team for the 2011 Olympic Qualifier, I’m more confident that we can make it to the 2016 Olympics if the SBP’s national team program is put into place with the support all sectors. If you think about it, that’s “only” six years away. Make that five if we look at the 2015 Asia Olympic qualifier tournament as a reference point. If we can get the national training pool to be practicing and playing together as a unit for the next five years, we’ll have a competitive national team by 2015. This program should even stretch down to the country’s current crop of teen-aged blue chip prospects who could form the training pool for the country’s Under-19 and Under-16 national teams. This lot could end up playing for the flag when they hit their mid-20s.

Now that the SBP has gotten a vote of confidence from the FIBA, it should move forward and do the one thing that could make the BAP finally sit down. Think long term. Run that national team program. Make noise in Asia basketball. Do this and you’ll remove the bad and the ugly.

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Time-out: Happy birthday to Carl Veloso. You can reach me at [email protected].