I got a text message late last night from a basketball insider asking if I wanted to get a couple of drinks, and on a whim, I said yes. He was meeting a friend, he said, one of his idols. It turned out that we were going to be drinking with one of the best point guards in Philippine basketball history, a two-time NCAA Most Valuable Player, a former PBA rookie of the year, and the record-holder for most assists in a single game, dropping 28 dimes.

I would argue that at this point guard’s very best, he was every bit as good as Johnny Abarrientos, and he was right up there with any court general who ever took to the PBA floor. Unfortunately, his very best didn’t last for very long, and he’s the first to admit that he battled some personal demons which prevented him from realizing all his potential.

I kept asking him PBA-related questions, and he answered them good-naturedly, although he refused to let me write about him, saying all of those things are in the past now.

Do you know who I’m talking about? The answer in the second to the last bullet below.

• Interesting stuff from Twitter (that does not involve me): PBA stats guru Fidel Mangonon III shares that senior scribes are speculating that former FEU head coach Glen Capacio was not really diagnosed with high blood pressure in the middle of game 2 of the UAAP finals, but rather he was fired at halftime. Former PBL commissioner Chino Trinidad, most of whose tweets are in ALL CAPS, also weighs in a bit.


• More Twitter funny business (also not involving me): GMANews.TV reported that Kiefer Ravena had committed to Ateneo after the star high school prospect posted something to that effect on Twitter. Turns out that the twitter account @kieferravena15 isn’t his actual account; you can find him at @kieferravena. His dad Bong Ravena corrects the report, saying they’ve yet to decide Kiefer’s next step. I’ve been hearing interesting things that, unfortunately, I couldn’t share just yet.


• Mikkel Bolante of Patay ang Butiki makes his debut on FHM writing about the NCAA stepladder final four. Also, update your bookmarks because their blog has a new URL: www.patayangbutiki.net. Now if only they can provide more than once a month updates.


• Johnny Abarrientos looks like he might be headed back to Alaska. It’d be cool to see him in the lineup backing up Alaska’s new ace point guard, LA Tenorio.


• Kris Aquino tweets that she, Joshua, and Baby James are recovering from foot-and-mouth disease. Just passing it along.


• I really enjoyed Inquirer’s short pieces on rookies Shawn Weinstein and Jimbo Aquino. I’m not sure if these were also published in the paper, or if they were online-only, but it was a good job by two of Inquirer’s new sportswriters, Mark Giongco and Celest Flores. Hopefully these short, blog-style snapshots go on throughout the season; there’s certainly much interest in pieces like these.
  
  Perhaps the bosses at INQUIRER.net can also consider putting up a sports blog to complement their longer reports, similar to the New York Times’ Off the Dribble NBA blog, where their beat writers Howard Beck, Jonathan Abrams, and others contribute short posts apart from their full reports and columns.


• The PBA record-holder for most assists in a game is Eugene Quilban, who did it with 7-Up in 1992. That same year, he teamed up with import Dell Demps, now the general manager of the New Orleans Hornets, to carry 7-Up to the reinforced conference finals. They ended up losing to Tony Harris and the Swift Mighty Meaties, but considering that 7-Up was the Barako of that era, that was a pretty awesome feat.


• Let me end this post with some non-basketball stuff. Here’s my buddy Johnoy Danao with his first music video, Ulan: