Time to stop the Gilas Pilipinas blame game
First off, let’s just set the record straight before it gets muddled in a slew of counter arguments.
Do I think that the Philippines deserves the best representation it can get for the FIBA Asia tournament in China?
Yes.
Do I think we have the best representation for the FIBA Asia tournament?
No.
Would we be best represented in the FIBA Asia if all PBA teams lend their best players to the national cause?
Yes.
Do I think San Miguel Corp. (SMC) intentionally withheld its players from joining Gilas Pilipinas?
Yes, but not the entire SMC leadership. I do know at least one official from its basketball hierarchy “warned” players that there “could be” this wee bit thing called “consequences” if they volunteered for national duty.
Should San Miguel Corp. be pilloried for keeping its players out of Gilas Pilipinas?
Hell no.
Before you train your pitchforks and burning torches on me, please hear me out.
I’ve held my silence on the SMC witch hunt because I always felt that speaking out would exonerate the official who warned players that joining the national would endanger their careers. Also, I would have wanted to really see some of the best SMC players in Gilas 3.0.
As heartbreaking as it is to watch them hold out, there are misconceptions that need to be corrected when it comes to all the bile directed at SMC.
June Mar Fajardo should play for Gilas Pilipinas
Nope. It’s easy to compel Fajardo to man up despite suffering from plantar fasciitis and don the national colors in the name of flag and country. Sure, patriotism is so easy to invoke when you’re doing the invoking over a computer keyboard inside an air-conditioned office. Man up, you say. It’s only plantar fasciitis on both feet.
I don’t care if it’s a dead nail on the pinkie toe. Whenever you put “big man” and “foot injury” in the same sentence, that sentence should end with alarm sirens and words of caution. Ask any big man who has had to deal with foot injuries before. Big men tend to respond to foot and leg injuries differently than small guys.
So the next time you sneak off minutes while on the clock just to foist social media hate on Fajardo for skipping Gilas, remember this: While you can have a long office career despite the fact that you spend way too much time on Facebook and Twitter than you should, without basketball, Fajardo is just a small-town boy from Cebu who would probably end up hustling pool money from unsuspecting bystanders when not helping out his family earn a meager living.
SMC got rich off people’s money, the least it can do is lend its players to the national cause
I get that SMC would do the country a favor by telling its players to not listen to the official-of-doom and volunteer to be part of Gilas.
But conversely, it doesn’t owe the public anything because the public never paid SMC taxes. Whatever cash people shelled out in the name of SMC, the company paid back in full with its products.
So unless you felt shortchanged by the cash-for-product trade between you and SMC, calling for a boycott because they wouldn’t lend you their assets isn’t really completely justifiable.
NBA teams are willing to lend their players, why not SMC?
Yeah, sure. Jordan Clarkson, right? The Lakers set conditions that would have made it tough for Clarkson to complete the FIBA Asia in a Gilas uniform. But at least they were willing to lend their guy to Gilas.
But see, the National Basketball Association is set up differently from the Philippine Basketball Association. NBA teams can aspire for profits from TV deals, ticket sales, official merchandise and stadium tie-ups, revenue streams that that the PBA would die to acquire. PBA teams are there for the marketing and for love of basketball (unless you’re Blackwater or Barako Bull, then you’re there for profit too. But that’s a different story).
Despite the astronomical sums NBA teams put into maintaining their squads, they actually make money on them. Why do you think the salary cap is such a contentious issue during Collective Bargaining Agreement years? Because players and team owners can’t really agree on how much profit the league earns.
Not so with the PBA. Teams do not earn money. The TV deal the league has? That’s just enough to sustain a single PBA team. Ticket sales? Divide the net among 12 squads and see if you can cover each team’s expenses.
Merchandise? Hahaha. Funny. So maybe PBA teams are more protective of their assets than NBA teams are. And it’s not that team owners in the NBA do not complain about their players being called for national duty.
An NBA team owner is like a person who bought a fleet of luxury cars for hotel service. The cars earn you money. So when someone says, “Can I borrow your Ferrari so I can compete in an auto show?”, you just might, especially if the car paid for itself already.
A PBA team owner is like someone who worked so hard and then gifted himself with a fleet of luxury cars to show off. Would you lend your hard-earned Ferrari so someone else — your business rival at that — can show them off as theirs in an auto show?
If you answer yes, I can immediately tell two things about you: 1.You are pretentiously naive. 2. You haven’t earned enough to purchase a Ferrari.
But, but, but, patriotism!
Sigh. How great this world could be if patriotism is all that we consider in our everyday life.
But really. Patriotism? Ask yourself, if the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas (SBP) operated on patriotism alone, why didn’t they say: “You know, the SMC group has won five of the six championships in the two years leading to FIBA Asia. Obviously, they have the more dominant program. Why don’t we assign them the task of forming the national team, let them slap their product on the team jersey and then ask the other teams to lend whatever players they still need?”
(We’d still need Asi Taulava there because an SMC-run national team still shouldn’t include an injured June Mar Fajardo).
The SBP didn’t do that because it is aligned with the MVP group. Why hand the marketing keys of the national team to a business rival?
Now the important question: Whose fault is it that we aren’t sending the best representation to FIBA Asia when I agreed already that an open-door policy by PBA teams would give us our best team for the tournament?
See, that’s exactly my point.
The SMC witch hunt has deflected culpability from the side that should shoulder the blame for the country not sending its best possible team to an important international meet. Remember that we already had a blueprint for the national basketball program. We understandably deviated from it in 2013 because we hosted the Fiba Asia tilt and we needed a quick fix to get us to the World Cup, which offered three slots to Asia.
Why we did not revert to the original blueprint after that befuddles me.
The national team has never been a responsibility of the PBA or its member teams. Sure, it can be its advocacy.But advocacy and responsibility are two different things.
Only one group is solely responsible for the national basketball program.
It’s the SBP.
