Anticlimactic

Even before time bombed out in the men’s basketball final at the 19th Asian Games, the country already smelled and felt the gold as early as the third quarter. It was just a matter of time before the Filipinos regained lost glory. The Jordanians were stood up in a blink of an eye in their date with eternity.

Unlike the semi-finals match against host China where basketball-obsessed Filipinos were resigned to losing the ball game we previously dominated in the continent, almost in the world even. Down by two digits, even the winningest coach lost hope and forgot about the never-say-die fighting spirit of Barangay Ginebra, the only united village in the country because no politicians divide their constituency under a platform of unity.

Then Justin Brownlee happened and his rimless treys that surged past the host country in the dying seconds. The one point come-from-behind triumph upset China and its great wall Yao Ming. It was the first time the Philippine team qualified for the Asiad finals since 1990 when the country first sent its dream team of professional players to hunt for gold only to be haunted by silver.

But this time the silver already felt like gold because of how it was won and against whom. The stunned and petrified image of Chinese players right in their home court virtually asking what hit them was a sight to behold, especially for Filipino fishermen water cannoned in their own waters.

Many conceded in jest we really need America to beat China. Tim Cone is American who coached a hastily formed team of heritage and naturalized players from where else, the United States. Funny. Witty. Clever. Biting. And there’s more to it. The West merely pretends to protect us from the East because our location is strategic, but the other side has the market. Just like the one man who bailed the Philippine team out of trouble against Iran and China. Brownlee is not a brown Filipino. He is a black American who pretends to be Filipino by the mere expedient of naturalization.

Does he even know how to recite the rhetoric that is Panatang Makabayan or the rhythmic Lupang Hinirang? Or better yet, does he even know how to speak Filipino? Apart from playing for flag and country, he is yet to prove he is one of us. But at least he is not against us. Unlike those who pretend to be with us, and for us, but in reality are on us by stealing our cash.

Move over winged EJ Obiena and grapplers Meggie Ochoa and Annie Ramirez, make way for the one gold that matters, the one gold the country waited for 61 long years. That’s about the average lifetime of Filipinos, especially Filipino men too short for basketball who live shorter because they are taught those who express their feelings are weak.

The 6-decade wait means millions lived and died without seeing the special moment of national redemption, except those who survived hunger by eating empty promises of the people they trusted and a few select immortalized by science. Otherwise known as stem cell therapy whose privileged recipients continue to kill the many, not by their hands but how they run or ruin the land.