Dedication To Basketball Does Not Translate To Wins

Top 10 Rejected Gilas Fans Cheers.

1. Let’s enamor the foreign press with 0-4 record.
2. If only style points counts towards medal determination
3. Show me a good loser and I will show you… never mind.
4. It’s Not Whether You Win Or Lose As Long As You Keep Saying Puso.
5. We May Be 0-4 But Globe Telecom Still Sucks!
6. We got respect by not advancing. The qualifiers are posers.
7. PBA referees are better .
8. Good thing we vote better than we play basketball.
9. Who cares about FIBA’s Constitution, let’s ” clamor” to get into the win column since pinoys are the bosses of basketball.
10. We still have our perfect record.

I will let you in on a little secret. The more you are proud to be pinoy, the more you will hate what I am going to say and the more you hate what GRP has to say. As of the time I write this 24 teams are playing in FIBA 2014. Twenty one of them have at least one win. The fanbase of one of the three teams that has yet to get off the schnied  loves to talk about bad referees, respect of commentators they did not know existed, being the shortest team and “puso”. I get deja vu from 2010 when Noynoy’s articulate response to critics that he did not accomplish anything to be worthy of being president . Noynoy’s simple answer was that the presidency was his destiny. He is entitled to being president, no results or work necessary. Noynoy is popular with the Juan Tamads of this country the same way Ron Jeremy is popular with the segment of the male population who will not be mistaken for Chippendale’s Dancers.

Some of that fan base that venture into our little corner of cyberspace love to claim many of us know little about sports. In the immortal words of Pontius Pilate, I have written what I have written and go ahead judge me from that when it comes to sports knowledge. I won’t bother to give you a pompous sounding resume of my qualifications as a sports observer. I do know that living in this country for three decades that pinoy men’s sole outlet for team sports is basketball. No other country in the world has that going for them. Yet the Philippines has not appeared in the tournament in almost four decades. Here is the disconnect that bothers me that no critic has yet to answer. How come that basketball tunnel vision does not translate into a consistent contender let alone a power house? A further question is where does this sense of entitlement to basketball notoriety come from when there is no evidence of minimal success in FIBA or the Olympics? Then again Noynoy felt the position of  president was his destiny with no evidence of minimal success in his life. His mother dying does not count as a success attributable to him.

Pinoys are so proud of this “endorsement” by Mark Jones. I doubt many of you ever heard of this guy till he met the narrative you are so desperately trying to sell me and maybe sell yourselves. I have known of Mark Jones as a professional for over twenty years. You can Google his bio if you want but I know his role in the scheme of sports broadcasting going back to the early nineties. He is not Hubie Brown, Dr. Jack Ramsey, Mike Fratello or Bobby Knight. His role as a play by play man is to sell you what is in front of you. Even if “puso” is not in your vernacular. Pinoys in the last week like to think that because of Gilas “puso” they are winning hearts all over the world. I guess somebody forgot to tell the world.

There is no feature on Mark Jones words on the website of Jones’ employer ESPN. There is no actual section of FIBA news in the middle of this tournament. If there was a competition in terms of care towards FIBA the Philippines would easily beat the US. In my personal consumption of three days worth of ESPN’s Mike and Mike In The Morning, SVP and Rusillo and The Thundering Herd there was one sentence made total on the any FIBA event. The Dan Patrick Show has not mentioned the tournament since the withdrawal of Kevin Durant. No I will not do research whether talk shows in Lithuania and Serbia are talking about Gilas but I doubt they are. The US could care less about their team that is 4-0 while the Philippines talks itself into believing the world is in love with 0-4 team.

“You are what your record says you are”.

Bill Parcells.

There is a sentiment out there that all people should be happy for Gilas. Another secret is the team will do what it does, it’s the exuberant self entitled KSP fans I have a problem with. How they excuse the failures of the team annoy me. Yeah blame the refs, blame lack of height just don’t say the other teams are better. One critic reacting to Benign0’s piece brings up “overcome the mere 23 points (points differntial) we currently have in the standings?” . The standings I look at solely look at wins and losses. You get two points for a win and one point for a loss. The teams that place 5th and 6th in their group will not move on. Why this guy brings up this 23 points that are not part of the standings is beyond me.

Ironic I am bringing up the words of a dwarf when discussing a team whose press and fan base like using height as a built in excuse. This particular story not satisfied with playing the height card adds the original rhetoric of “surreal won game” Denial is not just a river in Egypt. There is a reason why the Philippines have not been in a truly international tournament since 1978. They are too accepting of those “surreal won ” games. Then again we are the country that made a man president solely based on the timing of his mother’s death. I wonder how Bill Parcells would have judged 2010 Liberal Party Standard Bearer Noynoy Aquino.

If Pinoy Pride is so important then why is it so cheap??? If I am a proud member of Assumption College’s Department of History will I consider somebody employed by St.Scholastica’s History Department as part of the work I am proud of?? Why bother dividing the tournament by countries then? People who accuse me of knowing nothing about sports in the GRP FB page bring up the names Tim Duncan and Hakeem Olajuwon representing the US. Well Duncan is a native of the US Virgin Islands. Hakeem became a naturalized US citizen after studying and working in the US for two decades. Somebody enlighten me on how exactly Andray Blatche is pinoy other than the fact he is not good enough to be on the US team.

In the Philippines there is a noticeable brain drain. The brightest and the best can thrive elsewhere where they are better appreciated and better compensated. There is very little jock drain though. Azkals come from all corners of the globe with foreign sounding names since the state of Filipino football is what it is. The only country on Earth devoted to basketball does not export basketball players instead imports them from North America. If we are as good as we think are, shouldn’t foreign leagues be mining us for talent? The same way some Brazilian kid ends up playing for Liverpool? In 2010 the city of Cleveland had major hate for hometown boy and MVP LeBron James spurning them for Miami. I guarantee you nobody in the US will accumulate any venom for Andray Blatche sporting a Filipinas jersey.

All these rhetorical pleas that excuse losing of “Puso!” It implies the opponent does not have any and the pinoy is special in the eyes of God. The only race with heart. Remind me of something else annoying. The rhetorical pleas that we should not impeach a popular president. The appeal to emo. It assumes that the President is indeed “popular” and that popularity automatically means that he is entitled to do what he wants.

Don’t misinterpret this as a critique on the basketball output for the Philippines representatives. I am not very fond of the gross misrepresentation of the basketball output for the Philippines representatives. I have a simple rule, love what you love and do what you love. Just don’t expect the world to notice if you are not the best or challenging the best. Yet when you read the local media and the fanboys plaster your feeds with barrels full of praise based on shot glass results coupled with trays full of entitlement, KSP is truly the root of all evil and about 90% of my editorials.

If you truly know who you are then stick to it. Sharknado 2 knows exactly what it is and what it wanted to be. They were not Terms of Endearment or Schindler’s List. They were Sharknado 2 and they succeeded in being what they are. Peter Dinklage knew who he was. He turned down numerous opportunities to be typecast as dwarf till he met a production that appreciated what he brought to the table.

The heads of that organization decided to do so as a symbol of unity among the PBA teams composed of various companies. Furthermore it used to be called SMART GILAS simply because Smart communications were the main ( if not the only ) sponsors of this program since its conception hence, the name and proof why there’s no ”epal” factor in naming the team with a brand’s name from a couple of years ago.

from the GRP FB page rationalizing a product fused to the national team’s name.

Nowhere else on Earth do you mention the national team that plays the one team sport the populace is passionate about and a cell phone carrier’s automatically pops out. That is corporate epal. None of the other 23 FIBA participants are synonymous with a corporation or a product. Denying the whole idea of Smart Gilas being epal is as “smart” as denying 11 Abads in Malacanang being nepotism. The person denying the epal has totally forgotten the existence of the PBA. A league that distinguishes its teams not by schools or civic communities but by products that often try to hawk themselves with annoying jingles when Filipino noon time shows take a break from providing you with mind numbing song and dance numbers. The only professional sports league has always been epal.

Sen. Sonny Angara: What’s the point of having a rich government if you have poor families. #LowerIncomeTaxNow #taxreform #solarnews

— Angara ng Pinoy (@SonnyAngaraNews) August 6, 2014

There you have it. A rich government that does not spend a dime for a basketball team to represent us opening the door for MVP to epal his products onto the national team’s name. Basketball is all you have. The sum of every pinoy boy’s sporting ambition in team sports. Yet you support a rich government that won’t spend for the only sport that defines your identity in the world. Conversely you resent the people that point out this relationship. Calling you emo detractors, Gilas fans because the word Smart does not come to mind.

About Gogs

Putting a very sharp needle into the balloon known as Pinoy Pride since 2012.

• What is it about Leni Lobredo Being Jovial In The Context Of Death? - April 16, 2018
• Pinoy Low Standards Even Trickle Into NFL Viewing - December 9, 2017
• Why The Dominance of 3 in 1 Is Appropriate For Filipino Society - August 10, 2017
• I Will Make Like A Hockey Player And Get The Puck Out Of Here - April 1, 2017
• Archbishop Villegas Believes That Duterte Is The Only Person That Deserves A Pastoral Letter - February 7, 2017