The dual citizenship age limit

If one had been a world traveler, a single distinct nationality will almost always be encountered no matter which part of the globe you are in.  Filipinos are found on the four corners of this round earth, if ever there are corners in a sphere.  More or less 15 million of our countrymen are scattered from Iceland to Mongolia to Sudan and every Filipino community abroad have among others, their basketball leagues.

Going to foreign lands results in inter-racial marriages and with regards to basketball, these mixed unions produced the talents of legends named Kurt Bachmann, Carlos Loyzaga, Robert Jaworski, Freddie Webb and other non-local sounding names.  Later generations saw the likes  of the brothers Siegel, EJ Fiehl, Rudy Hatfield, Nic Belasco and Kelly Williams to name a few.

All of the above mentioned had, at some point in their basketball careers, represented the Philippines in international competitions.  Because of mixed marriages, we continue to have a supply of high breed products.  Currently on the Gilas competing in the Asian Games at Inchon, South Korea are the present Filipino-Americans Gabe Norwood, Jared Dillinger and Jimmy Alapag.

Enter Stephen Holt, Jason Brickman and Jordan Clarkson.  They have Filipino mothers married to Americans and being brought and trained stateside, they have very high basketball pedigrees.

Holt is a 6-4 guard and played with the Atlanta Hawks in the NBA Summer League averaging 8.6 points in 5 games.  He refused training camp invitations from the Hawks and the Memphis Grizzlies and opted to play this season in the German Bundesliga.

Brickman, at 6 feet, led the US NCAA Division I in assists the past two seasons with a combined average of 9.26 assists per game.  He is in elite company in NCAA record books with NBA greats Mark Jackson, Avery Johnson and Jason Kidd – all accomplished ball distributors.  He recently signed with Dynamo Moscow in the Russian Basketball Superleague.

We had become familiar with Clarkson.  This year’s NBA second-round draft pick was signed by the LA Lakers to a two-year contract as backup to Steve Nash and Jeremy Lin.  Gilas Piilipinas, with the coming retirement of Alapag from the national team, could have a very solid and hard to beat backcourt if these three new guys are on the squad.

Could have, would have.  These high profile athletes won’t be illegible to show their talents for the national team as FIBA requires players to have their dual citizenships before they turn 16 years old.  This rule supposedly prevents a country from harvesting overseas talents and making them instant citizens.

In all actuality, the said rules are on FIBA’s books for sometime but it has been violated and abused by some Middle Eastern countries by filling their lineups with athletes coming from different nations who can pass off as natives.

Reportedly, Qatar circumvented the rules on dual citizenships that aside from African and American basketball players, they also recruited Kenyan runners, South American football players and who knows what other nationalities they had as athletes parading as Qataris.

Recent developments made FIBA revisit their rule books and it is next to impossible that they will go lenient on this.  I think there’s only one option for our country’s basketball governing body to do.  Scout the four corners of the round earth for basketball talents fifteen years old and under, put them in a training/development pool and in five years, they will be ready for battle.  Maybe we won’t be too dependent on naturalizing foreigners who gets too queasy eating dinuguan, squirming and closing their eyes while experimenting with balut and have budbud without taking off the dahon sa saging.

As I write this, the Philippines is going mano-a-mano with the bigger and taller Iranians, the second half about to start, Iran ahead by 2, 36 to 34.  Laban Pilipinas!

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Congratulations to Hector Cabatingan on the opening of his new venture – Hec’s Kitchen and Bar.  If you’re somewhere in the Liloan area, check the place at Malvaroza Building, along the national highway, in front of the old public market.  They serve breakfast, lunch and dinner.  There’s a variety of good food and best of all, at very affordable prices.