Get tougher competition

(Editor’s note: The following is the last part of an article on Philippine basketball and the national team.)

What do these facts indicate? Because of the globalization of basketball, professional or amateur leagues in many countries make it a point to organize mini-tournaments and let their national players square it off with other countries. This the Selecta-RP team did only now when it played in the Sondrio tournament, which the local press called the "RP-Selecta Euro Basketball Challenge."

China has now learned to muscle its way against the world’s best teams because the CBA has prioritized the sending of its national squad to mini tournaments — or it organizes its own tournament featuring the world’s top teams.

The globalization of basketball has pressured countries to play against the best teams in the world so that its players improve on their skills. For the Philippines, it periodically does this through the Asian Games and nothing beyond that — except for the Sondrio tournament and the series with the Melbourne Tigers this year.

But the wins over Latvia’s national squad and an Australian team that has two Olympic Games statistical leaders and two Americans showed that the Philippines is the overlooked world power in basketball. Even without much international exposure, plus struggles in jelling as a team, the Philippines upset Latvia in Sondrio, and fearlessly upset the Melbourne Tigers.

Had the PBA accommodated previous requests to send an RP team to the biennial Asian Championships, or to more tournaments in Europe, the Selecta-RP team would have long improved in international play. However, we are now chasing once again for form that could make us win back the Asian Games gold.

They could have even beaten the Melbourne Tigers with double-digits in game 2 of their series.

The Busan tournament is expectedly competitive, though Asian teams are really weak teams compared to other top-ranked countries in Europe, Africa, and the North and Latin Americas. Unfortunately, the Philippines, which grappled for form in the regional competitions, continues to struggle in the Asian level as China already became a world-class team.

Chinese-Taipei was no competition since the start of the two-game exhibition, especially after it lost to a Philippine Basketball League (PBL) team and to another local team, Spring Cooking Oil, in their ensuing tune-up matches.

Then Uichico insists on trying to get Qatar, which we can surely beat. Basketball writers also hype that North Korea is a cause for alarm (because of its 7-10 center Ri Myong-hun), even if it has not competed internationally for over five years already.

What the country must now arrange is more tough competition, even if the year is no Asian Games year. The more that the country should be sent to the Asian Championships and get back into the Olympic Games, since the 1972 games in Munich and the World Championships since the 1978 edition which Manila hosted.

Lindsay Gaze’s effort to stage a prospective Grand Prix meet that features Australia, New Zealand, China, Korea and the Philippines is a big step to bring back Philippine basketball into the world map. If you would recall, in the late 1980s, the PBA had the series featuring PBA teams and a selection from the International Basketball Association (IBA), where retired PBA import Sean Chambers was first discovered.

Now that Busan Games is here, the Selecta-RP team hopes that its players have already reached their peak form. But China is at its peak already even if it lost heavily to Germany, Argentina, and the United States in Indianapolis. This will make China the overwhelming favorites in Busan.

From the Busan experience, it is time for the PBA to play the tide in this globalized basketball world. Maybe a surprising gold medal finish in Busan can make it happen.