Why basketball is mission impossible

By Al S. Mendoza

WE made it to the quarterfinals.

As I write this after watching that miracle, the nation’s praying for another miracle.

No, it’s the basketball republic that’s been praying since Day One.

In case you have forgotten, we are the most basketball-crazed country in the world.

We can’t even qualify in Olympic basketball but we love basketball.

We can’t win any medal in the World Basketball Championships but we love basketball.

We can’t even win the Asian Games gold medal but we love basketball.

Isn’t that crazy?

Basketball is not  the game our  Asian  neighbors love to play and it is our obsession.

It’s the game most Asian countries love to hate and it is our national pastime.

Jesus A. Garcia Jr., the cycling legend from Mangaldan, is justified anytime he berates a basketball fan he meets.

“We should stop our foolishness,” he said in a text-message to me after our country bowed to Iran on Tuesday.  “Height is might and that is what basketball is all about.”

I texted him back to say it’s not all medals.

“It’s also about friendship,” I said.

“I agree,” he said. “As the Olympic adage tells us, ‘it’s not about winning, it’s about how you tried winning.”

See?

Sri Lanka played us without having any chance of winning.

It tried to win. And that was all that mattered.

But Sri Lanka did not really try to win.  It merely played-or merely tried to play the game the proper way.

Because cricket is Sri Lanka’s national passion, it played basketball improperly against us most of the way. Cricketers filled the squad.

But that was not the point.

The point was, Sri Lanka arrived in Tianjin, China, for the Fiba-Asia qualifying not poised to win.

It was there on another mission: friendship.

It’s been happening all these years on the world sporting stage-friendship taking the backseat in favor of winning.

Medals have become the order of the day instead of fostering camaraderie.

That’s why there’s been widespread doping in the name of winning.

Where have all the advocates of clean playing gone?

Where have all the flowers of sportsmanship gone?

Eight countries have advanced to fight for three slots as tickets to the World Championship in Istanbul (Turkey) next year.

Luckily, we are one of the eight.

If you ask me, just by being in the Top 8 is worth a medal already.

Now if we get more lucky-shorter players like us can only hope for luck and beg for the cage gods to intercede on our behalf-and we finish third, then that’d be the gold medal itself.

The mission is done.

In 2010, finishing in the cellar in Istanbul wouldn’t be much of a hurt anymore.

We have no chance whatsoever when members of the Big Boys Club get down to business.

Refute that and you are as foolish as the village idiot.

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