Once more with feeling

Philippine-Milan Basketball Association (PMBA) commissioner Mel Nazares hopes to organize a series of exhibition games featuring legends Samboy Lim, Allan Caidic, and Hector Calma in Milan this December.

Before the Philippine national team ended its four-game, eight-day Italian campaign last week, Nazares spoke to Caidic about the December project. Caidic, who joined the trip as one of coach Joseph Uichico’s lieutenants, said he will sound out the stars in Nazares’ wish list. Nazares asked if Bong Alvarez and Kenneth Duremdes could be included in the lineup.

It was Nazares who broached the idea of the national squad playing an exhibition in Milan and in a four-nation, three-day tournament in Sondrio. Italian team manager Claudio Silvestri said Nazares coordinated the effort to bring in the Filipinos. On the Philippine end, project director Carlos (Bobong) Velez sealed the deal.

Of course, the trip wouldn’t have been possible without the support of RFM president Joey Concepcion and the Philippine Basketball Association.

Nazares, 44, has led an extremely colorful life. His devotion to basketball is so unflinching that he left his wife Ligaya Hernandez of Sariaya, Quezon, because she made him choose between the game or her. Philippine team consultant Paul Howard said Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson was in a similar predicament and like Nazares, decided his love for the game was stronger than his love for his wife June. Jackson wound up with his boss’ daughter Jeanne Buss while Nazares remains unattached although he claims to have reopened communications with his boyhood sweetheart Trinidad Mabilangan, now a widow working in Hong Kong.

Nazares, a native of Sto. Tomas, Batangas, is the oldest of nine children. After high school, he did odd jobs to earn extra money for the family because his father, who used to sell merchandise in Baclaran, fell ill. Then, Nazares enrolled at the National Manpower Center where he took up auto mechanics and equipment management for three years.

In 1978, he went to Saudi Arabia and worked for a US installation. He organized the Eastern Province Basketball Association for Filipino overseas workers in the Kingdom and kept the Filipino community active in sports on weekends. When the US installation closed in1988, Nazares went to Mediagore in Yugoslavia, praying for an opportunity to find work somewhere in Europe.

Three days later, a Filipino employment broker invited Nazares to go to Italy on a speedboat from Yugoslavia for a price of $1,200. There was a chance that the speedboat wouldn’t make it if the Yugoslavian border patrol, armed with machine guns, caught on. But Nazares, insisting he had a vision of St. Claire encouraging him to go to Italy, took the risk. For three hours, Nazares and 11 other Filipinos lay under a canvas sheet in the speedboat that rode the rocky waters at midnight. The speedboat landed on the shores of Trieste where a waiting car took the illegal migrants into town.

Nazares made his way to Milan. For a month, he found no work, living off friends who supported him in the traditional bayanihan spirit. Then, Nazares was employed as a domestic helper by a wealthy Italian family. After a year, a general amnesty was granted for illegal migrants and Nazares was issued a permit to stay. The permit was his ticket to find more gainful employment. He got a job in a cleaning company then moved to Infostrada, the telecommunications company of the Olivetti group, where he has now worked the last 10 years in the building maintenance department.

Last September, Nazares was issued a certificate of permanent residence. Nazares, who speaks fluent Italian, plans to stay in Italy for good even as his two children, a 14-year-old boy and a nine-year-old girl, live in Sto. Tomas with his parents. He regularly sends money to his children and plans to finance the building of a church in his Batangas hometown.

In 1990, Nazares formed the PMBA with pals Nanding Reyes and Chito Padua, both Filipinos working in Milan. The PMBA plays its regular season from September to May. It also conducts a summer league. There are eight clubs in Serie A and 12 in Serie B. The players are all Filipinos and grouped according to clubs or provincial roots.

In 1992, Nazares brought in a group of Filipino players – including Freddie Hubalde, Noli Banate, Joseph Pelaez, and Oscar Torres – to play seven games during a 45-day vacation in Milan. It took another 10 years before Nazares was able to invite another batch of Filipino cagers to play in Italy.

Nazares said he is busy promoting basketball among Filipinos in Milan and neighboring towns. On weekends, he is hardly home. Basketball is his passion although at about 5-1, it doesn’t look like he was born to play the game. In Manila, he said he used to hang out with Alvarez, Lim, and Ed Cordero. He loves being around players and talking about the game.

A few years ago, his wife gave him an ultimatum because he would leave the household chores to her on weekends while attending to his basketball projects. It was either basketball or her. Without batting an eyelash, Nazares chose to leave his wife. Just as well, he added, because she ended up living in with a visiting friend’s son who happened to stay with them in Milan.

Nazares said his life would make an interesting movie. He would choose Berting Labra, a lookalike, to play him. For his first wife, he picked Sharon Cuneta. For his long-distance girlfriend in Hong Kong, it’s a tossup between Ara Mina and Marianne de la Riva. Nazares, who hasn’t gotten rid of his Batangas accent despite living 13 years in Italy, is sure his life story will be a box office hit and hopes to persuade Viva boss Vic del Rosario to consider it as a possible movie.

But before Nazares goes off tangent, maybe he should just concentrate on basketball. After all, Caidic and company are looking forward to a visit in Milan before the year ends.