Erik Spoelstra as collateral damage

Why is Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra not getting the adulation he richly deserves from Filipino fans? I think a large part of the reason is LeBron James and Dwyane Wade. His two superstar players have superior athletic skills but many Filipinos think they lack character.

The Philippines is a basketball-crazy nation. Boxing, even with Manny Pacquiao thrown in, cannot match basketball either in popularity or in the number of people who engage in the sport in whatever manner. And no other league or competition is known to more Filipinos than the NBA.

Any Filipino kid who has ever laid hands on a basketball would, if only as a matter of pretense, strive to play as if he were playing in the NBA. Kids growing up on basketball would emulate the moves by their favorite NBA stars, calling out their names as they do.

Sadly, owing to the level of the game in the NBA, as well as to the natural physical attributes of the Filipino, actually playing in the NBA may not likely happen anytime soon. But the next best thing came with the appointment of Spoelstra as head coach of a real NBA team.

And not just any ordinary team at that. Miami is in the NBA Finals against Oklahoma. Now, Spoelstra may only be half-Filipino (his mother is pure Filipino from Laguna) but again this is the NBA, so that is already as good as it gets.

Besides, I do not see why being only half-Filipino should be a hindrance to popularity. Take Jessica Sanchez, for instance. She is just as Filipino as Spoelstra. And yet she seems to be far more popular than the Miami coach.

I can of course see how showbiz has made it so. Nevertheless, I cannot imagine American Idol being more significantly important than the NBA. The NBA is a far more compelling economic driver than Idol. As a whole, Spoelstra will leave a far more lasting imprint than Jessica.

So why is Spoelstra not even half as famous as Jessica, or Thia Megia for that matter, or the Azkals, or our Mount Everest conquerors, our Dragon Boat rowers, our pool masters, and even Cristeta Comerford over there at the White House?

He is head coach of the Miami Heat, for God’s sake. He is NBA. If he does not wince getting fined $25,000 over a run-in with a referee, he must be earning far more than the names I have rattled off above. So why the seeming coolness toward him?

Because of James and Wade, that’s why. I have reason to suspect there are more Filipino basketball fans who loathe them than like them. And it is this loathing that has rubbed off on Spoelstra unnecessarily and in the wrong way.

One would have thought that, against Oklahoma, a relatively new team composed mainly of very young but very good players, Filipinos would be rooting for Miami especially since it is coached by a man with Filipino blood in his veins.

I am not saying Miami has no Filipino fans. It has. But consider this — when the Lakers, Spurs, and the Celtics, teams with large Filipino followings, bowed out in the playoffs, where did you think their Filipino fans shifted their support to?

I am not saying the answer is disturbing. But when Filipino fans of the Lakers, Spurs and Celtics shifted to a relatively new team in OKC instead of to Miami with its Filipino coach, that really got me to some serious thinking. 

And I think the reason is James and Wade. There is something in James and Wade that turns off people, like when they ridiculed and made snide remarks last year about Dirk Nowitski’s cold, or when Wade openly argued with Spoelstra in open court.

Filipinos are a unique people. They can get very passionate in their sports, or in some other pursuit they take with great seriousness. But one thing about them, they never lose their sense of values. To Filipinos, athletic skills will always be secondary to character.

That is why Filipinos have, regardless of team color, always gravitated to the likes of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. Not only did they have the skill, they had the character to go with it. But the same can’t be said of James and Wade. And our Spoelstra ends up as collateral damage.