So, Filipino basketball fan: how do you prefer your heart to be broken?

Do you prefer your team to play listlessly, running around like headless chickens, and being dazed and confused for 40 minutes, as Team Pilipinas did Saturday against Qatar, where they looked like they were still licking their wounds from their quarterfinal loss to Jordan?

Or would you like the rug dragged out from under you, as the team plays very well before collapsing in the final minutes and getting nailed with another last-second dagger, like what happened in the Team Pilipinas game versus Korea, where they led by as much as ten points with 6 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, only to let the Koreans back in to the game and allow them to steal the win on a jumper with one second left?

You’d probably say that you’d prefer the second over the first, and I would agree, but it doesn’t make the pill any less bitter to swallow. Losing sucks.

And this is my least favorite part of having a sports blog, having to write about these things. I could talk about basketball, but then we just come back to the point I’ve made over the past few days about our big men – Qatar and Korea’s athletic bigs demolished our frontcourt – or I can go back to my argument that the issue about our team’s outside shooting is really a red herring – the Philippines shot miserably from three against Korea, but so did our allegedly deadlier East Asian rivals.

Like I mentioned the other day, I don’t want to get into the what-ifs – what if Ryan Reyes and Kelly Williams hadn’t gotten injured, what if this team had six weeks instead of three weeks to train, what if Japeth Aguilar hadn’t gotten hurt at the start of the tournament, etc. All those things just make me feel worse.

So where does this leave you and me? We’ll nurse our broken hearts, and then we get over it. Because really, it’s not about winning or losing. I don’t think it ever was.

And then two years from now, when we’re competing in this tournament again, whether it’s the Smart Gilas team or another PBA-backed team playing, we’ll be back hoping and praying, living and dying with each impossible jumpshot and each careless turnover. We’re such suckers.

That’s kind of the point of this whole deal, isn’t it?