Secret origins of PBA superstars

Where does basketball greatness begin? For some, it’s by accident, when someone’s flipping the channels and you wind up getting your first glimpse of a live game. For others, it’s being given a toy ball for your fifth birthday. Still others had older brothers, fathers or uncles who played the game. For many, it was a practical way to get a free education. These are some of the secret origins of PBA superstars.

“Basketball for me was something that will fit you in,” reveals former PBA All-Star and NCAA champion coach Ronnie Magsanoc. “When I was in San Beda, if you didn’t know how to play basketball, you weren’t part of the games, you weren’t part of the group. It was one way of making sure you were part of the community.”

From San Beda, Magsanoc and Benjie Paras teamed up to lead the University of the Philippines to its first and so far only UAAP men’s basketball trophy. The pair joined forces anew as pros, helping Shell win four championships in the PBA in the 1990’s.

“My earliest memory of basketball was when it was too cold outside to play, I would cut a paper bag – the bottom out of a paper bag – and tape it up on the wall and make a ball out of aluminum foil so we could go inside because it was too cold,” recounts PBA Hall of Fame inductee Ricardo Brown about growing up in California. “And so we played basketball inside like that.” 

Brown played for Pepperdine University, was recruited to play for Crispa, but wound up signing with Great Taste Coffee in the era before there was a rookie draft in the PBA. He was also part of the San Miguel Beer Grand Slam squad of twenty-five years ago, returning in time for the Third Conference after a life-threatening heart condition from an injury he got in the finals of the same conference the year before, in 1988.

“Even the trash can, you can throw the ball into, you know,” says PBA legend and original defensive wizard Abe King in an interview in California. “You know, practically every corner you’d see people playing, so I joined them.”

King was eventually trained at Cavite National High School, then went on to San Beda before seeing action briefly in the MICAA. He played for Toyota for seven years, entering the PBA on 1977. 

“My earliest memory of basketball when I was young was, basketball wasn’t a man’s sport deep in the Pacific Islands,” recalls veteran PBA center Asi Taulava. “It was more of a woman’s sport, you know, I guess basketball was introduced to them by the Australians.”

Taulava could be describing netball, a sport similar to basketball which does not involve dribbling or dunking but a lot of passing, it is played predominantly by women. Taulava was originally a tackle football player, until an injury caused by being too heavy forced him to choose basketball. And the rest, as they say, is history.

“My first basketball was the plastic orange that Royal Tru-Orange once gave out as a promo for their soft drink,” says 1992 PBA Most Valuable Player Ato Agustin. “That was my first ball, and I used to copy Atoy Co, who was my favorite player.”

After a solid career as a small forward with the RFM franchise in the Philippine Amateur Basketball League, Agustin went on to prominence as lead guard for an injury-riddled San Miguel Beer team that saw Hector Calma, Franz Pumaren and Samboy Lim injure at various points. It was at that time that this writer nicknamed him “The Atom Bomb” a play on his name, his explosive scoring, and his bowl-cut hairstyle. In 1992, Agustin became the smallest player to become PBA MVP.

“I think I was about five years old, growing up in Maasin, Leyte,” says four-time PBA Most Valuable Player Mon Fernandez. “I’m the youngest of nine, with six boys. All my elder brothers played basketball. Every time (former national player Joaquin Roxas would come home, we would go to the pier to meet him because we knew that, in the afternoon, he would play with my brothers in the plaza.”

Fernandez eventually made an amateur selection that represented the region in Manila, where he was recruited by top colleges and commercial teams. He became one of the pioneers of the PBA with Toyota, and spent 20 years in the league, winning MVPs for different teams.

“I would say probably the park leagues,” answers Ginebra leader Mark Caguioa of his first exposure to basketball growing up in California. “I started joining park leagues. And my Dad used to play his basketball too, and all my uncles. And they were really the ones who taught me.”

Caguioa learned the rough play of adults even as a kid, and not only survived, but made good, eventually setting the scoring record at Eagle Rock High School in Los Angeles. Curious about the style of play in the PBA, he received tapes of games from broadcaster Chino Trinidad, and this only fanned the flames of his desire to prove himself in his homeland.

“I never tasted basketball until I came to the Philippines,” says two-time Grand Slam coach Tim Cone. “I played baseball in the States. I came here when I was eight years old. My first year, I went to the province in Quezon, in Baler. And that was the first time ever I picked up a basketball, and we played basketball every day in tsinelas (thong slippers) and bare feet. And my Mom would go crazy, but we’d do it anyway.”

Cone, then an aspiring writer, would later join village leagues in Makati, where he would encounter future friend and assistant Chot Reyes and his brothers before becoming great friends. Tim was once so tired from playing basketball in the heat in San Lorenzo Village, he slept an entire day.

From little acorns do mighty oaks grow.