Basketball gold or nothing in Kuala Lumpur

 

By Al S. Mendoza

WE get pounded black and blue again in the SEA Games, fine.

We don’t land in the Top 3 in Kuala Lumpur, fine.

We even finish fifth, sixth or seventh overall, no worries.

But, hey, how about this?

We lose the basketball gold in the biennial meet.

That’d be worst than Armageddon.

It’d be like we got hit by an earthquake measuring intensity 7.9 on the Richter scale.

Or even a typhoon deadlier than the tsunami-powered “Yolanda” that struck Tacloban in 2014, killing thousands.

Win all the golds but not the basketball trophy—the golden bonanza would amount to nothing.

But lose everything in exchange for the gold in basketball, heavenly.

Get the drift?

In short, nothing matters in Kuala Lumpur but the basketball gold.

Even if we achieve the impossible—emerging overall, if not landing in the Top 3—that doesn’t create a ripple if the feat excludes a basketball triumph.

That’s like saying Jamaica would definitely be in tears had Usain Bolt did not win the century in the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Or Cleveland going bananas seeing LeBron James leaving but not Kyrie Irving electing to opt out.

Only twice did we fail to win the basketball gold in the SEA Games—only once actually did we stumble: to Malaysia.

The second failure was when we were barred from participating.

That was when the Fiba (World Basketball Federation) suspended us for leadership fights among our cage officials.

Now, we really can’t afford to miss winning our 17th SEA Games basketball gold.

We are even on vengeance mode.

Were we not badly bludgeoned in the Fiba Asia Cup?

After a sweet sweep of our Group in Beirut, we suddenly ran into a deadly Korean crew and lost very, very badly.

Who would have imagined Gilas to lose to Korea by 32 points?

As a result, with just one loss, Gilas did only get booted out of the medal race.

Gilas plummeted to seventh, the country’s worst standing in the tournament that we last won in 1973 in Manila.

It seems we could never really regain lost glory in Asian basketball anymore?

Haven’t we lured American behemoths to adopt Filipino citizenship if only to strengthen our slot with added ceiling?

But, alas, seven-footers Marcus Douthit and Andray Blatche couldn’t complete our Asian dream.

Blatche even showed his true colors when he backed out of Gilas in the Lebanon campaign.

“I am doing it for security reasons,” said Blatche.

He can go to hell.

At least Douthit could lay claim to having helped us finish second in the 2013 Fiba Asia Cup, sending us to the Fiba Worlds in Spain that year.

Basketball being our national sport, Gilas not winning the gold in Kuala Lumpur would be as unacceptable as seeing Manny Pacquiao lose to Jeff Horn again in their rematch.

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