General Admission
Fervent prayers more than good players
By Al S. Mendoza
THE winner today (Sunday) will “merely” be the champion.
I say merely because that’s what it is: Decoration is the champion’s trophy.
The teams that will battle for the crown in the 15-nation Fiba Asia Basketball Championship have yet to be known as I wrote this.
Will it be former champion Iran versus defending champion China for the title?
Or did Gilas Pilipinas sustain its luck and go all the way to battle for the crown?
But winning the championship is important if only for record purposes. Posterity’s sakes.
Otherwise, the metal matters not much.
It’s like making it to the 12-man team to the Senate in the May 2013 polls.
Grace Poe was No. 1 and was it Gringo Honasan who was 12th and last?
First or last, it doesn’t mean a thing.
Grace and Gringo are both senators now. One and the same. No difference. Same tags. Just the gender.
As Kuya Leonie Galvez loves to say, “The difference is the same.”
Thus, I repeat, the winner today is no different from either the second placer or the third placer in the tournament.
That’s because the first, second and third placers after today’s concluding games all advance to the Spain Fiba World Championship next year.
Different placings, the same reward: Each of the three slots is an all-too precious ticket to Madrid in 2014.
The last time we made it to the World Cup, via a meritorious route, was in 1974.
We represented Asia in the 1974 Puerto Rico World Basketball Championship by winning the 1973 ABC crown – ABC then being the Asian Basketball Confederation, the predecessor of the Fiba Asia Championship.
To get to Puerto Rico, we needed to defeat South Korea, which was powered then by the legendary Shin Dong Pa, who remains, to many grizzled greats of the sport, as Asia’s best shooter ever.
In the 1973 championship game between the Philippines and Korea, Robert Jaworski handcuffed Shing Dong Pa to his lowest output in the tournament.
In that game, Shin Dong Pa “merely” scored below 20 points when, before the PH-Korea finals clash, he was averaging nearly 40 points a game.
Jaworski, who was captain ball of that fabled team, was greatly aided by Tembong Melencio in the “Stop-Shin-Dong-Pa” battle cry devised by the late coach Tito Eduque.
Jaworski, a former senator, is now 67.
But Melencio, Tondo’s biggest contribution to big-time basketball, had passed on – knifed in the dead of night after he figured in a barroom brawl in Pasay City a decade or so later.
As I was writing this, Gilas Pilipinas was virtually just two wins away from making it to Spain next year.
Our team appeared good heading to the quarterfinals on Friday. But more than good players, fervent prayers might just transform a dream into a reality.
Miracles are as “perennial as grass.”
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