Just noticed that I'm getting a lot of traffic from people searching about the Smart Gilas RP National Basketball Team currently competing in the FIBA-Asia Champion's Cup in Jakarta, Indonesia. Let me point you guys to the wall-to-wall coverage of the competition over at Bleachers' Brew. Rick Olivares is doing a great job, if you don't mind him nuthugging national team coach Rajko Toroman every few paragraphs or so.

One thing that Olivares doesn't mention quite enough in his series of articles: this is a club competition, meaning that most of the teams competing are commercial teams from each country, so the team didn't really beat Lebanon or lose to Iran; they beat the Lebanese San Miguel Beermen and lost to the Iranian Talk N Text Phone Pals. Despite that, however, it's a good experience for our developmental team that will compete in the 2011 FIBA-Asia Championships, the qualifier for the 2012 London Olympics.

It's been interesting to follow the team, and I am especially thrilled with the budding superstardom of starting point guard Mark Barroca of FEU, who looks like he's next in the great line of Filipino point guards, in the footsteps of legends like Hector Calma and Johnny Abarrientos. He has that ceiling. If he starts dating the 2009 equivalent of Christine Jacob, then the future of Philippine basketball is in steady hands.

Also, this is perhaps the best time to point out that Chris Tiu is the captain of the team. I guess that would make him Alfie Almario in this analogy.