Sour grapes against Aldin Ayo

Some people just don’t like Aldin Ayo. Perhaps it’s because of all of his success as a collegiate basketball coach. Perhaps it’s his confidence, which some people brand as arrogance. Perhaps it is his ability to transform players and teams into winners. But now, there are grumblings against him for leaving one of the most popular and successful amateur teams in the country for a rival that hasn’t won a championship in a decade. But when you sift through all the diatribe and stick to what’s concrete, it’s a non-issue.

Ayo takes on the Letran Knights, then surprisingly wins an NCAA championship (Letran’s first in a decade), which most first-year coaches are unable to do. Then he leaves Letran to coach De La Salle, raising quite a few eyebrows, not to mention the hackles of the Letran faithful. Some called him ungrateful. The following season, he wins a UAAP title with the Green Archers and the overpowering Ben Mbala. This season, Ayo and his mayhem defense took the Green Archers back to the finals, where they were dethroned in a dramatic Game 3 by Ateneo. Along the way, the defending champions became something of black hats, winners some quarters considered villains. Ayo didn’t help matters, at times responding to Blue Eagles coach Tab Baldwin’s compliments by calling them “mind games”.

By then, there was already talk of him leaving DLSU. He initially demurred, then denied the talk. Mbala was staying, and he was staying, and that was it. At the same time, former Green Archers, some alumni, and even media were starting to criticize, some trying to find a polite way to frame their accusation that he was telling his players to hurt opponents. One former player this writer interviewed commented that the extra motions in the viral video of the finals (which showed pinching, holding, attempted groin punching) were not natural to the players. Of course, no one can prove any accusation of that nature. 

So now, Ayo is going to University of Santo Tomas, and is being branded a mercenary. But is he? If a contract expires or has an opt-out clause, then one is free to do whatever he wants. You don’t hear anyone bad-mouthing Ben Mbala, the two-time Most Valuable Player who suddenly departed DLSU for the greener pastures of a Mexican commercial league. Much as we would like to talk of loyalty and gratitude, a coach’s career is unstable, unregulated even. We’ve seen coaches in the PBA go through a revolving door: head coach one conference, assistant coach the next. What matters is that they can still contribute, and are still employed. Some are even replaced or demoted midway through a tournament, and we think nothing of it. Good soldiers and all that.

The fact of the matter is that Aldin Ayo now finds the challenge of bringing the Growling Tigers a UAAP trophy more appealing or rewarding on some level, whether or not the material compensation is bigger. He is a professional basketball coach and is entitled to work wherever he wants. He has brought championships to the schools he has coached, and that makes him an appealing acquisition. That’s his choice, that’s the school’s choice. All his public pronouncements are of gratitude to De La Salle, a polite but far from mandatory gesture. He is doing everything professionally, it seems. So where’s the beef?

The problem is that communities expect loyalty, even try to enforce it. There are residency restrictions for players who transfer from one school to another, even one league to another. Players are restrained from transferring to other schools, even if those schools offer the courses they want to take. Not all schools offer engineering, accountancy, medicine. There seems to be a sense of ownership, of recovering the investment in a player, which I’ve always thought was unfair. After all, the player has agreed to work hard in his or her sport while studying like other students who aren’t also athletes. Why should the player or his family be beholden to the school for something that was never free? Luckily, that same principle does not apply to coaches, who are considered grown-up, unlike athletes (who are generally adults, too).

There seems to be a prevailing attitude of having to pay your dues or demonstrate fealty, even when you’ve lived up to the letter of your contract. Three years ago, in the corporate training company I work with, we once had a client whose sole purpose for hiring our group for a workshop was to get its management trainees to stay with them an extra year. That was the only way the company could recover its costs in training them, no matter that there was no room for upward mobility, anyway. Talk about commodifying people. But these people are also working while being trained, so isn’t the company already getting something for its money?

So Aldin Ayo is lucky enough and talented enough to choose where he wants to work. We should all be so lucky. But he also has a responsibility to get results, and with his track record, he has set the bar high for himself. But that is what winning gets, a chance to succeed somewhere of your own choosing. As the saying goes, strike while the iron is hot. It won’t always be this way, and for many coaches, it never is. It’s a reminder that we make our own way, and nobody should begrudge us the opportunities we earn on our own merit.