Just in case you’ve been under a rock lately, an exhibition match will be held tonight at the Araneta Coliseum between Powerade Team Pilipinas, the team that represented the country in the 2009 Fiba-Asia Championship, and the Smart Gilas National Developmental Team, which is being eyed to compete in the 2011 Fiba-Asia tourney.

Proceeds of the event will go to victims of Typhoon Ondoy. The upper sections will be open to the public for free, in exchange for donations of old shoes for the victims. Mico Halili reports that the event will also be broadcast on a delayed basis at 6PM over CS/9.

Rafe Bartholomew sent me this story about the start of the tension between Powerade coach Yeng Guiao and Smart Gilas coach Rajko Toroman, which happened about a year ago today. Rafe pointed out this hilarious quote from Yeng: “If [Toroman] has the technology or the system where the six-footers can beat the seven-footers and we don’t know it then I’ll carry his bag. That’s exactly what I mean. We have to prove that, ‘Pinoy tabi ka muna because undoubtedly mas-magaling ito.’”

We’ll all have enough time to talk about the game tomorrow, but what’s actually more interesting to me is the philosophical and cultural battle between the teams. Rafe actually had a couple of good posts about the subject when it came up last year, and sharing his pipe dream about how to go about building the national team:

Filipinos are right to feel proud of their place in the basketball world, both its history (which includes participation in the first Olympic Games to feature basketball in 1936, a bronze medal in the 1954 World Championships and the Philippines' routine domination of Asian tournaments until the late 1960s) and its present. The country may never reach those heights again, but I think they could reasonably aim for earning a spot in the Olympics or World Championships sometime in the next 10-15 years.

Aside from this overall goal, I think the RP team should be assembled with another purpose in mind: to share Philippine basketball's unique character. What, precisely, am I referring to? Filipino basketball players have a unique blend of creativity and toughness that makes them a joy to watch. One-on-one moves like the sidestep and the gallop dribble on the break don't exist anywhere else in the world. The wild yo-yo layups and pektos spin shots that players like Willie Miller and James Yap convert every game, at their most exhilarating, can be as exciting as Lebron James' dunks. Maybe I've just been around Pinoy basketball for too long, but I really believe that.

I happen to share this view, but I’m afraid that we’re in the minority, if you go by the reaction to the Powerade Team Pilipinas performance in the Fiba-Asia tournament. I guess this is why everyone’s drinking the Smart Gilas/Rajko Toroman Kool-Aid. Make no mistake about it, I’m going to support Smart Gilas a hundred percent when they go out to compete, but between Toroman and the whole Japeth saga, it feels a little like we’re losing our collective basketball soul.

Then again, maybe the “winning at all costs” philosophy now defines our basketball psyche. We've seen what that can do before.

But why does everyone assume then that winning with this crew is a foregone conclusion? As Rafe pointed out in the same post:

Let's dispense with one last question: What's the point of being an entertaining team if you can't win? You've got a point. But a more conservatively assembled RP Team without all the tantalizing, inconsistent talents of Willie Miller or the eccentric skill set of Arwind Santos, like the 2007 Tokushima team, wouldn't be guaranteed to do much better. If you're going to be a long shot, I say be a long shot with character, become the scrappy, wild team that's the darling of the fans, and go out in a blaze of glory.