A new book relives Philippine basketball’s lost glory–and more

By Ray Roquero Special to BusinessMirror

PERHAPS we do not need an American coach in basketball, because we know all the techniques and strategies.”

So said the Philippine basketball’s foremost leader, the late Senator Ambrosio Padilla, the fiercest defender of the faith that Filipinos were the best players in Asia. It was late 1965, 13 months had passed since the Philippines’ shocking elimination in the qualifying tournament for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and a few months from facing its biggest challenge in the Asian Basketball Confederation or ABC (now FIBA-Asia) as the region’s undisputed power.

It was a moment when “still in control of their destiny, the basketball moguls were thrust into the crucible of a historic choice,” wrote Noel Albano in “When We Were Champions,” a magisterial work on Philippine basketball’s astonishing rise as a monolithic power in Asia and, for a time, a world contender in the sport.

But the “critical moment of the sixties came to pass frustratingly, silently,” in Albano’s words.

Instead of an “audacious stroke to re-imagine the future,” the moment became a “step taken backwards…pride in the nation’s basketball tradition prevailed over a bold strategic change in direction in mid-decade. Believing that the key to their deliverance still could be found in the past, Filipinos turned more inward-looking than ever.”

The book brings readers back to this and other pivotal moments in a sweeping narrative, grand in scope and immense in power.

A ccompanied by a bonus of rare, neverbefore-seen pictures, the narrative summons to life the 1900s.

But basketball had played second fiddle to football and baseball, and it had much to do with the fact that the game, under the original rules, had been “a slow, sleepy affair.” That changed in the mid-1920s with the birth of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).

More significantly, it provided the talent pool of the first Philippine Olympic team which saw action in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. So we encounter the NCAA’s first two scoring champions, Padilla and Charlie Borck, and speedy playmakers in Jacinto Ciria Cruz and Primitivo Martinez.

The book’s most lyrical part comes when it hits the 1950s when Filipinos, incomparably talented, enjoyed a near-absolute dominance of Asian basketball.

They won the bronze at the 1954 world championship in Rio de Janeiro, placed seventh at the 1957 Melbourne Olympics, collared a third successive Asian Games basketball gold in 1958, and swept the ABC inaugurals in 1960. Th is was the handiwork of the “golden generation” at a time when all that the Filipinos had to do to win the Asian crown was “show up in the arena.”

L eading the Filipino gladiators were the peerless Carlos Loyzaga, Lauro Mumar, Antonio Genato, Ramon Campos, Rafael Hechanova and later Carlos Badion, Bonnie Carbonell, Constancio Ortiz Jr., Gerry Cruz, Alfonso Marquez, Kurt Bachmann, Narciso Bernardo and Edgardo Ocampo.

But the distant murmur of insurrection, which Filipinos ignored, became nearer, louder as the 1960s rolled in. After missing the Tokyo Olympics, they lost successively the ABC crown to Japan in 1965 and the Asian Games gold to Israel in 1966.

For the record, Filipinos last saw action in Olympic basketball in 1972. That’s half a century ago. The last time we held an Asian crown was in 1986, nearly four decades ago. And we have not won the Asian Games gold in 60 years.

Is there hope of a Philippine basketball revival under MVP’s Gilas Pilipinas program? Read the book. It offers as much consolation as hope.

I h ad the privilege to write the Foreword after reading the raw final manuscript and finding it an intrepid and sometimes mesmerizing account of the glory years of Philippine basketball.

Now that it’s out, “When We Were Champions” deserves a prominent spot in the book shelf of every passionate fan of the game.