Good luck to Phl Smart Gilas

By Al S. Mendoza

 (My deepest condolences to Hermie & Tina Rivera of Dagupan City/Rosario, La Union/San Francisco, CA, whose daughter, Christine, succumbed to cardiac arrest during a business trip to New York last week.  Christine was so young, so alive, when the “thief of the night” struck.  She was 38.  May she be by God’s side forever now…)
 

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HERE we go again.

We will do battle in the Fiba Asia Basketball Championship in four days.

Target:  Clinch a victory that would give us the ticket to the 2012 London Basketball Olympics.

A tall order but doable?

Umm.

A tough grind but achievable?

Umm.

Are we really never going to stop?

We’ve been battered left and right in international basketball events, except in the SEA Games.

That’s because our foes outside of the region are literally giants compared to us.

In the SEA Games, we are almost of equal height with the opposition, the chief reason we can’t be beaten by countries like Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

But go to even the Asian Games, and we get thrashed there time and again.

That’s because China’s bets have become much taller than us now, not to mention other Asian countries with behemoths too like Iran, Qatar and Lebanon.

Thus, we will again be meeting these Asian neighbors of ours in our almost impossible mission to sweeping them all under the rug to pocket that precious Olympic ticket.

The last time we were in Olympic basketball was in 1972 in Munich, a time when the countries I mentioned above still considered basketball as a game for sissies.

To get past them all now is like seeing a camel pass through the eye of a needle.

One man, Manny V. Pangilinan or MVP, has not stopped, like the great Ninoy, dreaming of the impossible dream of clinching that ticket yet again to the Olympics.

Pouring in millions of his own money, MVP has even tapped Serbian Rajko Toroman, the coach who put Iran to a first Olympic basketball stint in Beijing 2008.

On Toroman’s shoulders our improbable hopes are pinned right now and, despite a not-so-potent lineup, MVP and his allies endlessly speak of optimism.

We have a taller crew now, given that naturalized American Marcus Douthit is 6-foot-10, Japeth Aguilar 6-9, Asi Taulava 6-8 and Kelly Williams 6-7.

But it’d still be uphill for us in the event set in Wuhan, China, Sept. 15-25.

Nonetheless, all the best to the Philippine Smart Gilas Team.

We need prayers—and luck to pull it out of the fire.  Lots of it, I tell you.

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