A couple of nights back, I was chatting with Rafe Bartholomew to congratulate him on making it to Quinito Henson’s column (an honor that falls somewhere between his Fulbright scholarship and his Bakekang television appearance). Quinito quoted Rafe, who wrote a feature on the Knicks guard last season for Seattle Weekly, as texting that Nate Robinson might have Filipino blood through his mother, and the Philippine Star columnist raised the possibility of the defending NBA slam dunk champion playing for the country in international competition.

Needless to say, message board fanatics all over the Internet virtually wet themselves over the idea. They started discussing what it would take for Robinson to eschew playing for the Knicks and the NBA after the season to concentrate full time on Smart Gilas. Others, meanwhile, were cool to the proposal, saying that Robinson’s entry to the team would hamper the development of Smart Gilas ace point guard Mark Barroca. Anyhoo, I’ve been hearing that the SBP has since been in contact with Nate Robinson’s mother.

The conversation between Rafe and I though moved quickly from Nate and Quinito to another sky-walking figure in Philippine basketball, Billy Ray Bates. “The Black Superman” was recently honored as the 40th greatest player in Portland Trailblazers history by the Oregonian, and Blazers beat writer Jason Quick was able to track down the former import in New York for a feature that came out the day before Christmas. It paints a bleak picture of Bates, who has been in-and-out of jail and rehab since his playing days: “He is desperate for employment, and says he is attending a Back to Work program in Manhattan that offers job referrals. However, in order to work he must first gain a New York identification, which requires a birth certificate, which he can't find, but is working on, and should be done tomorrow. He has no bank account and usually no more than five dollars to his name. When he does have money, it's because he has flatly asked someone for it. He is intensely engaging, highly likeable and willing to speak of his missteps.”

I don’t know if the feature is sadder than the series of stories Quinito himself wrote on Bates last year. Bates tracked Quinito down via Mico Halili, telling the writer that he was planning to fly to Manila to do personal appearances for the PBA to reconnect with his fans, and asking for help in contacting his old sponsors, a sneaker company that have closed down a long time ago. Quinito glossed over Bates’ sad personal history, and played off the former import’s Philippine return as a real possibility, even teasing a comeback of Bates’ old sneaker company; to me, it came off like a very cruel joke on a sad old man.