The Interbasket forum for Philippine basketball is home to some of the most passionate local basketball fans, particularly of the Smart Gilas Pilipinas National Basketball Team. Because of the rabid fandom of its members, the message board has attracted the attention of basketball insiders, including officials of the Samahang Basketball ng Pilipinas (SBP), the country’s national basketball federation.

One such personality identifies himself only by the handle Namamangha, and is acknowledged by everyone to be an official of the SBP. Oddly, the past couple weeks, Namamangha started badmouthing Smart Gilas coach Rajko Toroman in the forums:

07-21-2010, 03:30 PM

Allow me to provide you with an analogy, sir.

If you want to build an efficient, magnificent, delightful vehicle (a car, perhaps?) -- then you must plan, revise, execute and test that vehicle. You will get high-quality parts and you will expect those parts to perform.

You DO NOT replace already running parts with sub-standard or un-tested parts.

Once the vehicle that you've built appears to be running already, you will come to the conclusion that you must still make some revisions. Sometimes, you will want to remove some parts that you've observed is not helping the vehicle to achieve its fullest potential.

At a certain point, major parts must be revised -- or removed.

There may even be a point where the visionary of the "vision" must be removed. If only to achieve the dream, the vision.

Unless, of course, we just want to build a jeepney.

07-21-2010, 03:48 PM

You guys have been talking about Toroman asking for Kelly Williams for a long time already.

Do you see Toroman getting Kelly Williams?

Now he says he wants 3 more PBA players to join Gilas.

Do you really think he'll get them?

IS IT REALLY THAT HARD TO FIGURE OUT WHAT'S REALLY HAPPENING?

07-21-2010, 04:05 PM

Rajko Toroman was tasked to DEVELOP the Philippine men's national basketball team, called the "Gilas program." It is currently sponsored by Smart.

Do you think the capitalized word in the above sentence is being performed by Rajko Toroman?

07-21-2010, 04:10 PM

Mr. KevinDurant, sir, you will NOT believe just how much the SBP is giving Mr. Toroman just to make him stay. As opposed to the SBP's overall budget.

07-23-2010, 04:50 PM

Rajko Toroman is one of the best basketball coaches in the whole world.

He is also human.

He has forgotten that: The SBP Gilas program is a developmental program.

All the players in the Gilas program were personally hand-picked by him. To be developed as team members of the Philippine men's national basketball team. That is not happening anymore.

If he wanted the professional players to eventually play in the national team, then he should have hand-picked the professional players he wanted from the start.

Funnily enough, he has nothing but nice words to say about SBP executive director Noli Eala:

07-12-2010, 01:53 PM

I could enumerate 1,001 individuals who've been perceived as bad, by most people, but turned out to be as human as the next guy.

I'll only mention one person, Noli Eala.

As the SBP Executive Director, YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE the lengths he has gone just to get things done (most of the time, brilliantly) in the National Basketball Federation. Then, there is Gilas Pilipinas men's national team.

As a person, he is, just like the next guy, as human as he can be. Except that he's probably more intelligent than you think.

As a friend, he has no equal. It is my dream to see all of you who hate him (probably for the wrong reasons) become his friend.

So if this guy really was an official of the SBP, I wondered why he was badmouthing the national team’s coach. Didn’t the SBP bring in Toroman in the first place? Was it possible that they were setting up Toroman as a fall guy if Smart Gilas doesn’t reach its goal? Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense.

So I began to ask around, and I found out that the truth is much more complicated… and much uglier. I was able to verify the identity of Namamangha, who turns out to indeed be an SBP official who is a close associate of Eala. Everyone I talked to say that he’s quite an unsavory character, with one of them even calling the guy an asshole. A source tells me that he was even involved in a controversy regarding the finances of the PBA website project when Eala was commissioner of the league.

But still, why would Eala’s lapdog go yapping at Toroman? It turns out that the SBP, or at least Eala’s faction, has been on the outs when it comes to management of the Smart Gilas program. This stems from their mismanagement of the team, which included salaries being delayed, player bonuses being withheld for some reason, promises being broken, and other stuff we already know from all the Jamal Sampson drama. Right now, Eala’s SBP guys virtually have no power when it comes to the team, but they would still like to project an air of authority.

Which is why Toroman just goes ahead and talks to the media about acquiring PBA players for the team, even as Eala, who’s supposed to be the head of the national federation, remains deathly silent about the matter. Then again, as one of my sources put it, “Some jerk publicly mentioned that we wouldn’t be needing PBA players for this team!” referring to Eala.

Curiously, even Toroman knows the identity of Namamangha, and he knows that the guy has been badmouthing him online. Of course, these are all symptoms of the factionalism that has taken over the management of the Smart Gilas team. Right now, there are several cliques involved: Noli Eala and his SBP cronies; the group of Smart Gilas team manager Frankie Lim; and the group of Smart Sports head Patrick Gregorio. Apart from all those groups, Toroman remains a maverick.

All of these wouldn’t be a problem if only the country’s basketball programs under the SBP umbrella weren’t affected. But right now, a big problem looms for Smart Gilas and the SBP regarding the team’s participation in the Fiba-Asia Stankovic Cup. Several players would not be available for the tournament – according to team captain Chris Tiu, Greg Slaughter and Rabeh Al-Hussaini are busy with classes, while Chris Lutz and Marcus Douthit don’t have Philippine passports – so Toroman is leaning towards skipping the tournament altogether.

The problem with skipping an international tournament is that it would leave the organizers in a lurch, and it’s the sort of thing that not taken too kindly by Fiba. Doing it puts the Philippines again in jeopardy of a suspension from the international basketball body – which would affect not just Smart Gilas, but all our basketball programs, including the women’s team, and the youth team. It would be particularly tragic because we have a very well-run youth program that’s looking to make noise at the Youth Olympic Games and at the Fiba-Asia 18-and-under tournament.

It should be noted that Eala and the SBP lobbied hard for a spot in the tournament, taking the place of Malaysia. Fiba-Asia secretary general Dato Yeoh Choo Hock is a Malaysian, and could make things harder for the SBP going forward. Dato Yeoh, by the way, is a close friend of former BAP secretary-general Graham Lim.

I get all kinds of crap for allegedly being biased against Smart Gilas, but over the past year, I’ve turned into a big fan of the players, if not necessarily of the program and its management. They, or at least most of them, have shown the kind of heart and pluck that turns all the nationalistic fervor surrounding Gilas from empty rhetoric into something true. One source told me that the guys really, really wanted to win their Jones Cup game against Lebanon, because they were so worried that “titirahin na naman sila” if they lose. Mac Baracael, Chris Tiu, JV Casio, Mark Barroca, and everyone else – I will continue to be fans of them, even after they leave Gilas, and I’ll always be rooting for these guys.

These guys deserve to have the words “Pilipinas” emblazoned on their chests. My heart goes out to them. They don’t deserve all this crap.