I swung by the PBA office last Wednesday for a chat with Commissioner Chito Salud. I had wanted to talk to him about the plans for the PBA’s developmental league, which I’ll be writing about for the March issue of Baller magazine. I’d introduced myself by name as a Baller writer when I booked the interview, so I was a bit surprised when the commissioner’s executive secretary, Ms. Coy, asked me, “Are you Fire Quinito?”

Apparently, my reputation preceded me.

When Comm. Salud and I sat down to talk in his office, he started ranting about the PBA’s crappy website, a big frustration for him because he’d taken on the project to improve it when he was designated deputy commissioner in June. “Pangit pa rin eh,” he said. He added that he didn’t ask for much from the developers of the site – his peg was Yahoo’s NBA site, which was both simple and usable –but he didn’t know if the people working on it could do it. “Ikaw na lang kaya ang gumawa?” he asked me.

We got down to the official part of our meeting and talked about the PBA’s plans for the D-League (which I won’t get into here, so you have to buy Baller when the story comes out). After that, our conversation became a bit more informal, as we chatted about some of the issues hounding the league:

PBA players in the national team. By now, everyone knows that the PBA will be lending players to Smart Gilas to reinforce the team for the 2011 Fiba-Asia Championships. Salud foresees that the PBA will always be lending its players to the national team – a position that his father, former commissioner Rudy Salud, did not exactly agree with – simply because it’s what the public wants. He talked about the need to manage expectations for the national team in basketball, and to define realistic expectations for success, i.e. we ought to be really happy to win a medal in Asian competitions.

The Barako Bull leave. I asked him point blank if he thinks that Barako will still come back (I told him I didn’t think they would). He said that as commissioner, he couldn’t speculate about the intent of the Barako franchise, but he was going by what was written in owner George Chua’s letter that the team is coming back. Either way, he says, he has the go-signal to resolve the reported issues about the team’s financial obligations to its players, coaches, and staff members. Amazingly, he said no one from Barako had come forward to him yet about missed salaries that have been reported in the media.

Salary cap violations. I told him that one of the biggest problems hounding the PBA is the perception that it’s an SMC-MVP league, as teams owned by Ramon Ang and Manny Pangilinan have stockpiled talent in apparent violation of the salary cap. While it’s a concern, he said it’s hard for him as a lawyer to look into those matters without documentary evidence. “I can’t prosecute a team just because of a rumor, or because someone had a hunch,” he said. “Now, if someone could show me an ITR (income tax return) that shows a different figure than a uniform player’s contract, then I’ll get them.”

I asked if there was a way for the PBA to make the salary figures of each player’s contract public, like in the NBA, so that the public can examine them and look at potential discrepancies. He said he wouldn’t be opposed to posting these figures in the PBA website – that is, if they could ever get the damn website working well enough.

Tickets. I raised the issue of tickets to him, recounting my experiences as a fan of not being able to buy tickets to big games – a problem I’d written about on this blog before. He said that he was already in talks with teams to slash their allocations, from the semifinals onwards, and make more seats available for sale to the general public.

Television coverage. PBA team owners had agreed that the league would only accept a broadcast partner on a VHF station, which means that Studio 23, despite protests from Ronnie Nathanielsz, was out. Salud reiterated that the PBA was prepared for any possibility, but producing the games in-house was the last option. He mentioned that he had also been talking to representatives of GMA-7, who were offering to broadcast on Q-11 as part of a co-production deal. It’s an intriguing possibility, because in Mega Manila, Q’s VHF signal has better reach than both Studio 23 and Solar TV, but in other regions in the Philippines, it broadcasts in UHF.

Sports media. I did thank him for being a good sport, especially since I’d sometimes been critical of him. He said he didn’t mind, and he actually agreed with me about some points I raised about problems in sports media. He actually even read my in-depth background profile on him, but he wanted to make clear that he never bribed Victor Corpuz, despite the retired general’s allegations against him when he was still head of the Natural Resources Development Corporation.

Overall, Commissioner Salud struck me as a smart guy who’s full of energy. He’d be the first to admit that he’s still learning on the job, but he’s working hard at it. For the sake of all PBA fans, I wish him the best.