I can’t believe in 2019 where we have so much access to information that people still love to play the genetic victim card or some other excuse why the only country on Earth with basketball tunnel vision is so inept once they leave the country:.
- “Other teams are taller”
- “Height is might.”
- “There’s no question the Gilas players are highly-skilled and talented athletes. Gilas’ inconsistency is a result of lack of chemistry and preparation.”
- “The Italian Team is a National Team honed for FIBA, ours are professional PBA player put together a few weeks prior!”
- “We are the only SEA country, or even in the whole Asian region, that is so fixated to Basketball. It can be traced back to our history. As a former colony of the west, we identify ourselves as westerner than Asian.”
How many contradictions can you fit into a 2 sentence tweet? I also have no idea how the first sentence compliments with the reality that pinoy basketball players are in zero demand in leagues that play better and pay better.
The Gilas team (or Team Philippines as the rest of the world calls us in the few times the rest of the world sees us ) went winless in the recent FIBA tournament. What also went down in flames is local interest in the tournament . Remember this is the one team sport that the locals care about regardless of pinoy participation or lack of it. Maybe some people should watch other teams that actually got a win to see how they play. Other teams that don’t succumb to the height excuse. Other teams that actually play like a team.
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There is no I in Team but there is an I in “pinoy”
Pinoys are not known around the world for team sports. Nobody cares how we play team sports or why. The few times I find myself exposed to PBA marketing I am reminded of the pinoy values they exploit to attract fans. It’s always about being “astig”. There are the muse contests. The one value I don’t see the pinoys cherishing is teamwork.
It is all about pinoy culture and not about pinoy genes. Pinoy culture is about being “astig” as their PBA markets and their local hip hop reminds us. So the pinoy is vain and that is so evident in their TV , songs, movies and their basketball. That is the culture these athletes grow up in. Somebody please remind pinoys that basketball is a team sport and there is no “I” in team. Pinoys grabbed basketball and projected their own image into it and are so shocked when it wilts overseas. In what passes for research for this blog I stumbled on an instance of rare honesty and perspective from a different pinoy source . Of course I reproduce some of their caps here.
Please refer to https://filipinosaretooshortforbasketball.wordpress.com/2014/09/06/gilas-at-the-2014-world-cup-glorifying-losers/ for their thoughts. I love it
Enthusiasms, enthusiasms… What are mine? What draws my admiration? What is that which gives me joy? Baseball! A man stands alone at the plate. This is the time for what? For individual achievement. There he stands alone. But in the field, what? Part of a team. Teamwork… Looks, throws, catches, hustles. Part of one big team. Bats himself the live-long day, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and so on. If his team don’t field… what is he? You follow me? No one. Sunny day, the stands are full of fans. What does he have to say? I’m goin’ out there for myself. But… I get nowhere unless the team wins.
Al Capone in The Untouchables ( 1987)
I wish Al Capone could lecture pinoys about appreciating teamwork. With the exact method he used in the movie.
Pinoys will tell you they don’t care about other team sports because they are boring. Well Physics and Chemistry are boring to anybody who has not graduated from high school or worse not capable of graduating from high school. Anything can be fascinating to the educated and boring to the ignorant. Dana White (former head of MMA) once said the reason why combat sports are popular everywhere ( I paraphrase) is it is so easy to understand 2 guys getting into the ring and the possibility of one of them ending up on the floor. Pinoys fascination with team sports begins and ends with ball goes into hoop. That fascination fuels their playtime and their consumption and unfortunately their comprehension.
The NBA is the only sports league outside our shores pinoys care about so in a way it is kind of responsible for the way pinoys see the outside world and sports itself. Remember that chaos theory most of us heard in Jurassic Park . Butterfly flaps its wings and causes a hurricane halfway around the world. When I was a young boy discovering sports the NBA was a much different animal. In the 70s the league had a cocaine problem and possibly worse, the NBA Finals were broadcast nationally after the 11 PM news.
The NBA is still not the dominant sport in the two countries that it plays in but their turnaround since the 70s is nothing short of amazing. Commissioner David Stern had a simple strategy, market the back of the jersey and make it more important than the front of the jersey. This strategy obviously worked when you look at the present state of the NBA. The Bible says if you live by the sword you die by the sword. The NBA’s strategy had it’s pros and cons.
The NBA’s emergence from its dark days did correspond with what was left of the careers of Julius Erving and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as well as the emergence of Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan. MJ last won a championship in 1998. Despite all the quality stars that were just getting started around that time ( Tim Duncan, Allen Iverson , Kobe Bryant) TV ratings for the NBA Finals did not reach the MJ level until 2017. The NBA ‘s popularity was not dependent on superstars. I call it the Sharon Cuneta effect. The NBA seemed to reach it highs on a megastar.
The National Football League on the other hand is the big FU to the rest of the world. America is home to the best hockey, baseball and basketball players / leagues in the world. Yet the NFL dominates their ratings and big time NCAA football is very competitive with all other sports leagues that play in the US. Americans with their love for their own brand of football does not care about what the rest of the world thinks about their passion. As I wrote before the NFL is the most popular program in five different networks.
The NFL did experience a bit of a dip in ratings a few years ago. It was a dip and not a downward trend. Even with that dip , it is not like any other sport came close to catching up. The reason for the consistency is the NFL is very secure with its product on the field. It never had to resort to singling out its superstars the way David Stern did. The NFL is all about “The Shield”. It did not matter who retired , life went on. As a result even if a game is lopsided or played by cellar dwellers the ratings are still great.
So what does the NFL’s popularity have to do with the lack of fortunes of Filipinos in all team sports? It helps stress the paradox of the Philippines approach to team sports. The Philippines believes complete devotion to basketball and only basketball is their road to medals, riches and that most coveted commodity of our culture: pansin. American Football more than any other sport is the ultimate team sport. You can have all the talent in the high profile positions yet if you don’t have talent on either line of scrimmage then your team will be going nowhere. You will be surprised how much an excellent left tackle makes compared to the rest of the team when fans and even the TV camera will rarely focus on their play.
Another paradox I love to hammer home whenever Gilas or the Azkals inevitably come up short is the “leftover ” theory. Other teams that beat the snot out of Gilas are not playing their country’s favorite sport. Gilas brings in an import because it is already an admission that legitimate Filipinos are not enough. Any import on the roster will close the opportunity for a Filipino who actually cared about representing his country his whole life. Any import who cares enough to represent the Philippines I guarantee you was not close to making the team of the country he really belongs to. This applies to both Gilas and the Azkals. You are taking the court / field with players who are not in demand by the best in the world. So being competitive with the best in the world is just a fantasy. Yet Gilas coach Yeng Guiao felt slighted when the coach of the Serbian team mentioned the Philippines lacked quality. It should be noted that the score between the two teams almost resulted in Serbia outscoring the Philippines by double ( 126-67 ). Philippines, you devote yourself to your favorite sport and you have an import and that is the best you can do?
Lost in all this discussion about the lack of results or even competitiveness in FIBA is the lack of results of pinoy athletes in general. Nobody abroad cares about pinoy athletes in team sports or individual sports. One boxer/ senator in a country of 100 million is not enough to sway my opinion on this. One Olympic medal in 20 years? Japan had 41 medals in 2016 alone. Now why is that? The Japanese are taller?
Take everything you know about pinoy culture. If you need a refresher GRP will gladly remind you of the various facets of the inner workings of the pinoy mind.
Pinoy culture is about:
- short cuts/ singit
- not following rules
- not enforcing the rules
- choosing baduy ( cheesy) over intellectually stimulating / dignity
- personal glory/ swapang
- inconsideration for others
- excess noise makes up for lack of intellect
- entitlement
- pwede na yan
- KSP
- epal
- familiar family name trumps personal achievements
Every pinoy competitor grows up in this environment. Its up to you if this environment is conducive to success in team sports. Do these values lead to success when facing the world’s best? Joaquin Henson ( @thedeanquinito ) on Twitter loves to tweet as if the world is missing out on the joy that is pinoy basketball. He even RTs people who compliment his broadcasting. Maybe those same fans had nothing good to say about the team he was covering.
Since when is a game against a team as unaccomplished as the Philippines considered a “big game”.
You know a guy is desperate to put in the phrase “never lost” when it is only a 3 game sample size dating back to the Carlos P. Garcia administration. Why only 3 games? Gilas rarely qualifies the last 60 years to be in a position to play an African team.
The guy retweets compliments sent his way. Which might explain why he never retweets me. Maybe its a change of pace from all the negativity he sees from a team that was manhandled almost every single game.
I find it weird that none of the people who feel so left out that the pinoys have had no international basketball success since before the time of the Beatles do not question why basketball is all the country has ? No other country puts basketball on a pedestal the way the Philippines does. It is just one of their sports , it is not THEIR sport. The basketball team is often the second or third team in the pecking order so they feel they have something to prove. Not only are countries whose locals participate in more than one team sport externally competitive , they are also internally competitive . But we all know people who are proud to be pinoy already won the genetic lottery and are winners by birth so no need to be competitive.
I also find it weird that pinoys are solely occupied by the one team sport that caters to their swapang (selfish/ vain) tendencies. A game where everyone can score yet are so befuddled when teams abroad who understand team dynamics better (since they grew up playing other team sports) run circles around them. I am sure you all know Einstein’s definition of insanity. Pinoys since birth take up a team sport but bring into it individual values. They can never comprehend a team sport that does not reward every position with the equivalent of a lay up opportunity. They will never appreciate the beauty of a sacrifice fly , running out a ground ball or moving the man over. As Al Capone says ” I get nowhere unless the team wins”. Chalk that up as another paradox. A prohibition gangster says so clearly what is not even on the radar of basketball crazy pinoys.
Putting a very sharp needle into the balloon known as Pinoy Pride since 2012.
Wonder what would have happen if Scotty Pippen did not accept the role as second banana to Michael Jordan?
1. MJ was pretty much MJ by the time Scottie got on the team drafted from a small school. He had no leverage with the all star who was always on the highlights. Once it worked it was hard to stop.
2. Remember this?
In reply to no. 2, It’s what happen when ego takes over, teamwork breaks up.
Exactly, sometimes you have to hit them with something they don’t see coming and your best player has to be the decoy. I am sure that is in the Art of War somewhere. That is why the play action in American football if your team is balanced enough.
We will never excel in any basketball game; no matter who we will import. It is because Filipinos, lack the idea of teamwork.
Well as what Mr. Gogs said on this blog, there is no I in Team but there is an I in “pinoy”. And because of that, maybe it’s time that we should change the name of our country, a country without the letter “i” in order to learn the Filipinos that we should NOT become too selfish & too arrogant especially in sporting events like FIBA, Olympics, NBA, etc. And no, we will not change the name of a country from the Philippines to Maharlika because that one have an “i” on it as what President Duterte want it. For me, the best name for our country in which I’d got this idea from the name of the new autonomous region in Mindanao called Bangsamoro (or “Moro Nation”) Autonomous Region, and it’ll be called as “Bangsalaya” which is a Malay/Austronesian word meaning “Free Nation”. And yes, there’s no “i” on that name unlike Philippines or Maharlika so that all of the Filipinos or I should call them Bangsalayans be united & should not be separated within this archipelago country!
And yes, we should also change the name of our basketball team from Gilas Pilipinas to Lakas Bangsalaya instead. A strong, disciplined & united national basketball team! 😉
The notion that height alone is the reason we can’t succeed in basketball is becoming lazy and pathetic each generation. In the recently concluded U19 World Cup, our front court consisted of guys who were 6’7-7’2. That’s more than enough to take on international bigs from Europe and the Americas because the power forward and center positions are where size matters the most. Sure, we still lack size in the wings but that has more to do with the lack of 6’5-6’7 quality players who can play the small forward position. Lack of height is still an issue but it’s not as huge as it was 10-20 years ago.
What’s lacking is really “quality”. Sound familiar? Just rewatch our performances in the World Cup. The gap between European teams and Gilas in terms of skill alone is huge. Italy had no player taller than 6’8 yet they had no problems beating us by 46. Why? Simply because they played better as a team, their players are more fundamentally sound skills-wise, and have better conditioning. Our team on other hand put their fates in the hands of an overweight import and the local players simply resorted to 1-on-1 plays against guys a 3-4 inches taller than them. There’s hardly any teamwork whatsoever. This could not be any more clearer in the Serbia game where we had only 14 assists compared to Serbia’s 37.
As far as size is concerned, it’s really a no-brainer that basketball is a sport for tall people (6’2+). We don’t have scores of guys who meet this physical attribute but we have enough to fill a 12 man roster for the Olympics (if we ever qualify). IMHO, pinoys who keep resorting to the height excuse are mostly butt hurt pinoys who can’t face the fact that they are not tall enough for basketball but other pinoys are. I am not tall enough to play competitive basketball but that never stopped me from watching the game and supporting my country regardless of how fucked up the system is.
What we need is diversification of sports programs where players who don’t meet the physical requirements of a particular sport are given other options. Seriously, if I was between 5’11-6’2, there a fuckton of sports I can try out and perhaps excel at besides basketball. Athletes in this country simply gravitate towards basketball because there are no other options. Just look at Ernest Obiena, the pinoy pole vaulter who recently qualified for the Olympics. The guy is 6’2 and lean but he never automatically went to the basketball route. There are so many options for guys between 5’11-6’2 to try yet there’s little to no effort in promoting these alternatives.
Basketball does not have to be our religion. No sport has to be.
This comment is a far better analysis than the article itself without even trying to sound like the wise guy who think he has something of value to offer meaningful change other than just catching attention for himself. Lazy thinking indeed!
You call my writing lazy when you can’t even say what was lazy about it. Since you are lazy and never read it. You epitomize pinoy baduy culture that falls short in international competition.
Gogs,
What’s lazy is the readers expect you to anaylze the games of Gilas in FIBA vs its opponents in order to see Gilas’ weaknesses as a team, the opponents strengths and the fundamental reasons why they won and Gilas lost and what Gilas could improve. What’s the training of other countries players, their sports facilities, their budget among others in preparation to FIBA compared to the Gilas side of stories but you didn’t, you instead resorted to insult and generalizing overall pinoy traits, culture and history of basketball with the inferior comparison to other countries like that of USA as your forefront arguments.
You are stupid son-of-a-bitch Gogs. You better stop writing because the truth is you are like Gilas who is a loser and who is a mediocre writer and who doesn’t have an ounce to compete with other well-known writers in the world ever. In short, you are just a proud pinoy writer who doesn’t have enough skills to showcase to the world that you are the best. The moment you insult Gilas and Filipinos you also insult yourself with your mediocre analysis and write ups and the fact that you are a Filipino means you are also an inferior human being. Get real Gogs.
Nah. Gogs skipped all that because there is a deeper issue underlying Filipinos’ regard for basketball. The sort of “analysis” you are looking for you can get from any two-bit sportscaster or sports writer. Here we show the world the systemic dysfunction at the root of the Philippines’ failure at just about EVERY endeavour from a macro collective perspective.
Benigno, that deeper issue of basketball is all about preparation, the mental and physical conditioning of players, sports facilities, coaches and budget from the government and not the culture. If you always link culture to every problem of sports then you have to also link that culture to that sports Filipinos excel such as Philippine dragon boat, boxing, billiard and weightlifting and also include the academic competitions where all of this, Filipinos won several gold medals, then you can finally conclude Filipinos can excel like what other nations did with or without that culture.
I say Gogs is one proud pinoy among other proud pinoys when he wrote about pinoy basketball but did not even provide important inputs to justify his “expert” comments on this sport.
Surely the dysfunction you said of pinoy culture will not be solved when you go through general problems. To solve problem like basketball, you have to go through specifics. Henry Sy, Manny Villar and Manny Pacquiao in their early adulthood years did not blame pinoy culture to solve their general and complicated issue of poverty. They did not regard that as an obstacle that in order to get out of poverty is to confine to the perspective of solving pinoy culture first before they can solve their own problems. They focused and dwell on specifics to excel in their own endeavours and become rich and excellent. Filipino basketball should be treated like this. In spite of overall culture, focus on specifics to solve the specific problem. Gogs and Benigno only taking comfort of blaming the entire Filipino nation as a whole and to solve that they have to solve first the macro level. And that is the real dysfunction and stupidity here.
Well, if preparation is the issue, being proud and inward-looking caused Gilas to have poor preparation. Culture is a part of that too. The connection is just too obvious to deny.
@Jason: Gilas is the national basketball team. All of what you pointed out and attributed to their failure constitute just a thin surface that you scratch. Success in athletics — for that matter in all endeavours including the arts, sciences, and even business — start at the deepest levels of society in the homes where kids are nurtured, the environments where they grow up, and the entire social infrastructure that contributes to their development. The collective outcome — excellence in national fields of endeavour necessarily reflect the overall character of the society that spawned that collective achievement.
As Chino points out earlier, all those are parts of culture that, in excellent societies, come together to contribute to the national effort. The results reflect how much of those contributions exist and how well they come together which, in so doing, describes the overall quality of a society.
@benign0: There’re also deeper issues underlying a number of these disagreeing negative responses that we ought to show the world.
Gogs being with GRP, being lazy, skipped all that because, in his own words, his only main concern is just “putting a very sharp needle into the balloon known as Pinoy Pride (and stops from there!)”. His other submissions also reflect that. Other Tambays of GRP reflect that too!
In contrast, while he limits himself castigating the baduy, he’s also baduy being all praise to everything Foreign. He even declared in print here that his mission in life is preserving the classics (his fetish to everything Foreign). In other words, he’s no different from any ordinary Fantard, using the GRP platform to bandwagon and make himself look relevant. In reality, Gogs is a GRP Cheerleader with a dubious mission.
It’s outright hypocrisy and a very negative policy to impress upon the rest, with unashamedly arrogant celebratory tone, as being separate, shying away from the blame of the collective (migrating elsewhere, western-identifying, seeking entitlements of exemption, phony claims of being citizens of the world, etc..).
If Pinoy Culture is to blame, what culture have you adopted and honestly represent? You can’t truly change most people’s perspective with behavioral contradictions and inconsistencies!
Now that I think about it, it seems to me that Gilas might have had no plans of winning at all. They just decided to participate so no one can say that they’re doing nothing. Bahala na si Batman mentality still, baka sakaling manalo.
Chino & Benigno,
It is not the real issue. Blame the Philippine standard of basketball, not the culture and certainly not the nation as a whole. The culture only has little factor in shaping the talent of basketball. One has to like this game so much that he should start to practice this game and gain maximum familiarity in his early childhood years and has to continue to shape up and constantly practice this sport to master it so long as he wants to play. The hard training and the precious time he has to spend in order to become expert of basketball just like in any other sports.
Moreover, the Philippine basketball should have the standards of players similar to that of US to qualify for the national team. But to do this and the major game changer is that the Philippine government has to first allocate big resources for the right avenue of basketball players to practice with one-on-one coach, complete sport’s facilities with a clinic devoted to basketball improvement alone where players can practice everything necessary to improve, including the physical therapist and nutritionist and gym master. This is what I’m talking about because I believe Gilas players were not prepared enough compared to other foreign players or Gilas team hired players who don’t play high level basketball.
Just look at how NBA players train and if Gilas players are doing that year long, they have the chance to compete in international level. Sadly, Philippine government is not supportive enough. Basketball should have the right schools too for Filipino players and not only a full court in every barangay. Height and size are not an issue now because there are already Filipinos players who qualify. They only lack good preparation but certainly not the culture thing. I would rather believe lack of major support, standard and regulation from the government side.
If support from government, regulation and other things are missing from our basketball, it can still be traced, even in part, to the culture that forms people’s attitudes towards it. Why support is lacking, perhaps it’s the attitude that if I’m not getting anything from it, then why am I going to be involved? That’s quite a cultural thing nowadays.
Indeed. The “Philippine standard of basketball” Jason refers to is a reflection of Philippine culture and society.
If you still insist on connecting culture to basketball then you are that insensitive or you lack knowledge of basketball. Basketball is a sport that players do not need culture and beliefs to excel. In history, different nationalities of players had the chance to exhibit their best talents of basketball. US was defeated by France and Serbia, and France was defeated by Argentina in FIBA 2019. So whatever the race and culture there is always a chance to win. The Philippines just needs to adopt international standards of basketball to compete. Either they will do it or not but there is always a room for improvement. That doesn’t mean that if we have this culture, we are always doom to failure. You’ve got defeatest idea that’s why I said it is dysfunctional.
If you put culture above all sports, then it is the culture that Filipinos became champion on sports like boxing, billiard, dragon boat, and weightlifting among others. The Philipines has an excellent record on the above so it means our culture is great.
@Jason: Guess again. Pinoy-style basketball perfectly mirrors Pinoy culture. You need to know enough about basketball to see that.
Benigno, not really. Basketball remains an incidental group of talented players who have perfeclty enjoined their skills to compete. The Gilas did not have those needed talents at the time but culture should not be the reason because in history, Philippines is capable of winning like it won bronze medal in 1954 in Fiba World Cup.
I get that your fallacious assessment always comes out as shortcut to something the Philippines is a failure. You failed to deal with specifics because like Gogs you are too lazy to make sound research and arguments that’s why it only feels good for you to generalize everything. In reality, when you generalize the problem it won’t solve anything and won’t lead to meaningful change. Thus, as for you, you will only get self-inflated ego above all these things sans real experience on how things really work out.
If culture and sports were not related, then there wouldn’t any articles such as “Sport Mirrors Life.” If sport mirrors life and politics, then it means culture affects sports, and that is true with Gilas.
@chinoF If culture and sports were not related, then why bother competing as countries ? Malaysia is nothing like Norway culturally right? There are differences and the world is different. You compete to sort it out.
Gee Jason. Your scouting report on me must have been generated by the Gilas brain trust. You were lead to the strategy to ad hominem me to death and I will fold like Gilas did to Italy’s outside shot. This is a pinoy culture website based on opinion. I simply took facts I knew: 1) pinoys only know basketball. 2) pinoys have unrealistic expectations on the only sport they know 3) pinoys win- loss record 4) pinoys have no idea what ” the whole is more than the sum of the parts”.
Pinoys scream out their values so loud everyday and I doubt they scream out “teamwork”. As the quote goes “What You Do Speaks So Loudly that I Cannot Hear What You Say”. Pinoys are obnoxious with their actions and beliefs. I see it in Edsa whenever I am fortunate to be near it. That is a culture we all contribute to and we all tolerate. We allow it to exist. Your ad hominem has me trembling and is sure to improve things. You came to me. Why do I have to be the best?? I voice my opinion which happens to be distinct from others and I am entitled to that. This is not a sports website nor am I financially compensated for anything I do online. If I feel I have something to say within the TOS of http://www.getrealphilippines.com then I put in the work and that’s it. You have your opinion of me which is of similar mentality found in your typical grade school recess but hey your choice. Pinoys willingly choose baduy or else ABS-CBN , Andrew E, etc would be out of business. Maybe since you find me an idiot, you can enlighten me of another country who comprehends teamwork even less than we do?? I gave you my reasons. I should really enroll in your work ethic course.
Gogs,
You have no facts so I literally ad hominem you because you are full of opinion without valid arguments. Your opinion is not based on sound reason but only inflated ego with toppings of pinoy pride ever in pessimistic views that led you to think you are right above other Pinoys.
I explained what I have to explain above and you surely wouldn’t understand what I’m saying regarding Filipino basketball and their other sports because your thoughts are fixated to foreigners literally you lick their asses when you are not one of them and you don’t look like them and you are inferior to them. Philippines is a third world country and surely it has lot to improve including its basketball that’s why they’ve got to find ways similar to other countries if they want to compete outside in modern basketball like it did when it earned bronze medal in 1954 FIBA World Cup.
And if you found my comments offensive to you it is because you published your work in public which gives me the license to abuse you because I think you are not responsible with your opinions. If you keep your thoughts in private then surely nobody will bother you like I did to you. You are already considered “social media journalist,” and with that, you should not be onion-skinned when someone finds your work deplorable. Hope you get it this time.
@Jason: I tried my best to find a point or two out of everything you wrote above but I couldn’t find a single one. 😀
@benign0 , you tired searching for that elusive point too? They should make that an Olympic event and it can be another thing Filipinos will fail in.
Maybe we should stop making pathetic excuses like this and learn how to be a graceful loser, and if Gilas over there wants to win and perform better, then they can have some self-retrospection on their loss than have the fans wail.
There’s more than enough blaming on the culture. Any suggestions on how to change it?
These people should stop putting their feelings of “success” on a national sports team winning on their “behalf”, it makes one look brittle and weak when they lose and they wail and then comes to gauging “personal success”, the same “Pinoy Pride” moments when some American citizen who so happens to be ethnically Filipino wins some TV contest, can’t change this unless you change the way for these people to have pride with themselves and not have a sports team winning as a crutch to their fragile ego.
#1 probably is to drop the “Dream Team” delusion and start developing a solid, _supported_ team from the grassroots level, a team who plays for the love of the sport and not for the money that goes with it.
I can probably dream…
Here’s an Ateneo study (limited access though, but you can see the abstract) that says Filipino basketball is a mirror of FIlipino attitudes of rooting for the underdog, and seeing their struggle in the basketball players’ successes or failures. Another declaration that culture does come out in the sport.
I found this Youtube video which it was uploaded by a PBA Legendary Eric Menk & he have a very smart analysis on how Gilas Pilipinas should improve it, and IMHO he should become the next head coach of Gilas Pilipias because of this video. To SBP & PBA excetutives out there, DON’T IGNORE HIS RECOMMENDATIONS!!! ?
https://youtu.be/ZYQ4pPMiDMg
The problem with opinion sites such as GRP, through its opinion articles as represented by its opinion writers like Mr. X Gogs (and ChinoF too!) is when the assumed imagined geniuses is forced as gospel truths that we ought to swallow hook, line and sinker.
How can they be regarded as uprightly believable and acceptable if they don’t encourage readers to think or have the privilege themselves to choose which are or which aren’t? It’s tit for tat between opinion writers and readers!
With the obvious pertinent specifics and essentials simply and intentionally left out, their submissions simply lacks the power to convince. Something ‘dead end’ leads to nowhere!
To illustrate, just compare the above article (Gogs’) with the article, ‘Sport Mirrors Life’, referred to by ChinoF to cement an argument of the relation between culture with sports. Curiously, as if acting like Gogs’ disciple, he, too, omitted his hows and whys.
Follow the link to read and compare and see the difference between a bonafide writer and an amateur poseur. Mr. Everett Glenn, the author, presented simply not just rants but issues of relevancy with concrete examples pertaining to sports, in their cultural setting and experience, that they ought to address, such as: ethnocentrism, sexism, racism, exploitation of the powerless, incidents of academic fraud, policies designed to eliminate race as a consideration in the admissions process…
How can the experience of the regarded Champions be relevantly related to our experience of becoming champions? If indeed the foreign culture of Champions is what make them champions, is that a suggestion that the Philippine sports ought to emulate?
Naturally, it will have to be discussed openly (instead of shrieking arrogantly!) and defined what are they specifically. Such sides of culture related to sports, in our own setting and experience – if or not it can really be called or considered as part of the culture – that make national teams champions.
GRP opinion writers whose opinions lack the hows and whys cannot stand on their own but crumble. Bravado will not suffice, they fail to convince simply because they’re simply lazy.
This is what exactly I’m talking about. Gogs’ opinionated article lacks the substantial specific elements to support his opinion and, therefore, it doesn’t hold any weight and value to the critical readers except those gullible ones. An amateur poseur writer indeed and a nuisance to blogosphere.
A nuisance yet you come to me. You call me lazy and I admire how much work you put in to call me lazy. You seem so adamant in your stance of my irrelevance that you remind me of Colonel Fitts from American Beauty. One more thing. You do know the tagline of Get Real Philippines right? It has been the same for a long time. We all live up to that tagline. You are steamed that I live up to that tagline. You call it lazy. I call it truth in advertising. You have the entitlement of a tranny in Cubao insisting on using the women’s room. Possible running mate?
You are one big pinoy pridist Gogs if you haven’t realized that to yourself. You are the victim of your own slogan because you are talking to yourself “putting a very sharp needle to the balloon called pinoy pride” simply mirrors you. You hate Filipinos so much that you spent too much time and effort writing and publishing articles talking about pinoy pride and dysfunction proves your pinoy pride in grandeur after all. You like to hate them but you cannot escape them and you love to give attention to them. What makes you at the end of the day?
My time commenting here against you is not even 1/8 of the time you’ve spent in working out proving the irrelevance of pinoys in the world for 7 years since 2012 that verifies you love their irrelevance so much and you just want to make money out of their irrelevance. That’s insanity. You insist so much of hating them for many years knowing they are already that unimportant exactly what you called the biggest “pinoy pride.” You might be in mental hospital already. You love that taho vendors so much at 6am because even if they irritate you, you still love to hear them anyway. You are the victim of your own delusion.
@Jason, You must have meant ‘pinoy-pridist-in-reverse’, cause that’s what he is.
Hi Speed.
Lexico.com defines opinion as “An estimation of the quality or worth of someone or something.”
So in the case of a blog some give an estimation and support. This is what I did in this particular case that you really get off thumbing your nose to. Start off with facts. 1) Gilas win / loss record 2) margin of defeat 3) sports prevalent in the cultures of the participants in FIBA 4) discrepancies noticed I then decided to add to my palette pinoys traditional expectations when it comes to basketball. This of course is my perception. I discovered a gem during my research for this piece. You may call it lazy but it was screen caps of the last Gilas team’s bold statements that made the final tournament in 2014. Those are facts. I quoted snippets of basketball marketing. Both PBA and NBA. Those are facts. I talked about TV ratings in the US when it came to the NBA and the NFL. Those are facts.
I then use those to reinforce my opinion . Which might differ from MSM.
• Pinoys love basketball and only basketball and what they think is an advantage is actually a disadvantage.
• Pinoys love a team sport and bring too much of an individual mindset to it and that contributes to their downfall.
• Appreciating other team sports might help Pinoy basketball.
• Pinoys are too lazy to appreciate anything other than basketball ( or incapable) and that weakens their basketball performance.
• The absence of ” proud to be pinoy !” is deafening.
Many opinions out there why Gilas is useless. I made up my own and tell me if I copy pasted any of them. That is being lazy. I am original and you are not a fan of my ideas. Hey, you act like I never encountered the likes of you before.
I wrote what I wrote. It really pissed you off. That makes the work I did that you perceive as lazy worth it. That is a fact.
If a slice of self-congratulation is a fact that will make Gogs sleep better for tonight, I should give it to you.
The “dream team delusion” is a term that encapsulates the whole trouble with Philippine sports. It’s sort of like the “Asia’s Songbird” delusion that surrounds Regine Velasquez. It is all propagated and sloshed around within the small echo chamber that is the Philippines’ national “debate”. Filipino standards of “excellence” are all made up within their inbred minds because they conveniently decline to reference external absolute standards as objective baselines for their declarations and, as such, further nurture their own delusions as a result.
I cited Al Capone in my piece and in the movie he was done in not by murder, racketeering , extortion, arson , bribing the Chicago Police or even having Sean Connery killed. He was done in because the IRS did an audit on him and he went to jail for tax evasion. Pinoys love the “Asia’s best/ fastest / cuddliest etc” because the Philippines is not Al Capone and never will be Al Capone. Nobody cares about pinoy claims . The Philippines in the scheme of things is just a maingay taho vendor at 6 AM. No brains or skills to be competitive so noise is all he has. If he was really good then he will compete on a level playing field with other people who follow the rules and thrive. We all know the BIR here will never spend a centavo pressing charges on a noisy taho vendor. They are not worth it. Kind of apt analogy of pinoy international basketball.
Wow… This beats me. Opinions do sometimes dive rapidly down the level of the criminally insane!
It’s a bit perplexing to find someone, who, among its ranks in the GRP coalition, declares so proudly and finds merit more from a Gangster, in this case, in the person of Al Capone, who engaged in criminal activities of murder, racketeering, extortion, arson, bribery and tax evasion than from an ordinary Taho vendor who just happens to make a living, perhaps, for a family.
If a culture speaks for a community, it makes you wonder really if this is what GRP meant and stood for when it declared, “We beg to differ.”? Especially, when, the webmaster of this site, in another article, has these words to say:
“When rich and powerful people experience the same things ordinary people experience, they gain a more authentic understanding of the challenges faced by the broader Filipino community.”
Well, the webmaster already made his excuse for writing that, after all that statement about lazy thinking and all… ~chuckle~
First of all let’s establish that this post is about the only basketball obsessed country in the world being ineffective against countries who care more about other sports. So what if I quote a classic movie?? It talks about playing together which is something pinoys are not familiar with given their track record and lack of interest with team sports.
As for the taho vendor , can I got outside your window and just yell to the top of my lungs at 8 AM? Midnight if I am balut vendor? Many , many people have families but as we see in pinoy land what they lack in talent and brains they make up for yelling and that is OK with a lot of the culture. That is why they are there. They can’t even spell the phrase ” noise ordinance. ” And that is the epitome of pinoy culture. Noise is tolerated because ” they have a family”. Ignoring regulations is tolerable “because they have a family”. No taxes is ok because “they have a family”. That is pinoy culture.
Filipinos could indeed redirect their attention to activities that would help improve their quality of life. If sports is a way to cultivate discipline and excellence, then it should be actively promoted.
It’s amusing that there are people yapping about sports and culture are not related yet can’t explain why the Spanish football club FC Barcelona became a symbol to Catalan culture and Catalanism, thus their motto “Message que un Club” (More than a Club). You will understand why if you try to take a look at their history.
Now here’s what the OTHER reason why Gilas Pilipinas had lost on this year’s FIBA World Basketball Cup & this would be pissed off by the Pinoy basketball fans out there & this is true, according to this Youtube video that I’d watched recently, the real reason is the SBP (Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas), the organization who organized Gilas Pilipinas that they refuse to hire/to get a foreign head coach in their team in order to improve or to meet an international or FIBA playing level, especially to this former head coach of Gilas by the name of Yeng “The Idiot” Guiao that’s because he thinks that our local coaches will loose their job on coaching on our national team: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIW5uNOn3O8
Now that’s a pure BS & it’s a violation of an Anti-Discrimination Law (if there’s already a law that had enacted it before)!!!
No wonder why Gilas Pilipinas & even the rest of the Philippine basketball is big boo-boo!!! Nabahiran talaga ng pulitika sa sports. Kaya, it’s more fun in the Philippines…. NOT!!!!! ??
If they get Tad Baldwin, the better. Not to mention the fact that they once have Ron Jacobs as coach for the national team.
Heck, even Johan Cruyff had his tenure as manager of the Catalonian national football team. And he is Dutch.
The SBP is open to hiring a foreign coach. The problem is with the PBA and their reticence to support a foreigner as a head coach. When Tab Baldwin was appointed as coach in 2015, the PBA board—led by the San Miguel Group—made it difficult for Baldwin to get the players he wanted. There was no Junemar, no Japeth, no Slaughter, no Lassiter, etc.; am I supposed to believe that all of the aforementioned players got injured at the same time?
It does not matter how good or how well-renowned the person you appoint as head coach—foreign or local. If the basketball entities aren’t going to cooperate with your program, it’s basically pointless. There needs to be reforms and it has to happen from the ground up.
Hence my point. It is a team effort. On and off the court. Hire the best person to coach but if you don’t support that person what is the point? Everybody has to be all in. And that means beating other teams with teamwork . I doubt team cohesion has ever been a pinoy priority at any time. I am sure in other blogs about the pinoy disdain for teamwork I brought up George S Patton and his speech on the importance of teamwork when it comes to winning. Pinoys to a man really care more about bida ball than behaving as a team. Let’s see a foreign coach drill that out of them.
Well I hope if the Filipino basketball players would behave themselves to their foreign head coach to improve their basketball skills but as we all know that Filipinos are hard headed, ignorant & lack of discipline. This is our cultural identity & I don’t know if a foreign head coach like let’s say an American, or a Japanese or a Singaporean to do his coaching job to the Filipino basketball players, then it’s a tough cookie to break but this is the ONLY way to solve their problem just as what the former Gilas & current Ateneo Blue Eagle head coach Tab Baldwin as been interviewed by former PBA Legend, Eric Menk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLSbpBg4LQo
And btw, since he had been a head coach of Gilas, then how did he felt to coaching them before? Was it too easy for him or was it too darn difficult? ?
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