Philippine basketball sports has started to develop a small but vibrant community on Twitter, and Fire Quinito rounds up the best messages from athletes, broadcasters, and fans, in 140 characters or less.




Here’s hoping that when we vote for Chris Tiu as our president in 25 years – you know, after he serves as Manny Pacquiao’s vice president for 6 years – he’ll still have a full head of hair.




I miss Ed Picson doing the coverage. Always loved him, especially kapag binabara niya si Quinito.




Nice. I wonder though if there’s a workout to make Dyan a better boxing announcer.




Yeah, go for it Boyet! Just remember: Flirting on Twitter is ok, but writing love letters leads to disbarment.




Cool. And it’s high praise too, because Howie and I have spoken before about David Halberstam’s classic “The Breaks of the Game.” Also, if you missed it, he left a comment on the post about his James Yap documentary, and called The Genius “cutie coach Ryan.”




And the fans concur. Ayos si Coach ah, parang (500) Days of Summer lang eh noh.




An underrated, amusing part of Howie’s documentary: FEU center Aldrech Ramos chilling out wearing a jejecap.




Had a nice, quick chat with Mico after last night’s game. He’s one of my favorite sportscasters. Plus, he gives hope to all of us short guys who want to be involved in basketball. Also, he’s married to Pia Arcangel, so that gives us even more hope. I should probably stop writing now before I get into trouble.

Anyway, I had a good time at the game even though Derby Ace lost. Speaking of which...




Yeah, this was after Marc Pingris had a monster, two-handed putback slam dunk to cut the San Miguel lead to 4. The Beermen called timeout, and the arena DJ played Baby. Pati pagkatalo ng Purefoods, kasalanan pa rin ni Bieber. While we’re on the subject of music…




If there ever was a Sweetest Tweets hall of fame, Robbie Reyes would be a first-ballot inductee.

A couple of weeks ago, Howie Severino contacted me to talk about basketball. His i-Witness team had started reading Rafe Bartholomew’s Pacific Rims, and it inspired them to do a basketball documentary. They were playing around with the idea of featuring James Yap, particularly to show a side of him beyond being Kris Aquino’s controversial husband. Howie had also read my recent blog entries about James Yap, and his interest was piqued by James Yap’s amazing performance despite his marital woes. The only concern was that James might not be so forthcoming, because of all the controversies surrounding him.

So Howie and I chatted for about an hour, just shooting the breeze about potential Philippine basketball stories. I told him that the James Yap docu would be really interesting, because so many people only know him from his rocky marriage, which is a shame, because when all is said and done, he’ll probably be the most important PBA player of his generation. Howie, a big-time fan of Ateneo basketball, meanwhile also wanted to do something related to the UAAP, because of the league’s growing popularity.

I started telling him about young high school phenoms such as Kiefer Ravena and Ray Parks, kids who are highly-prized because of their precocious basketball talent. I said that they could still tie up the story with James Yap, because he himself had once been a high school and UAAP phenom. We exchanged a couple more emails about the UAAP, and Howie and his team went off to work.

I had no idea how the docu was coming along, or if they went along with the idea, until late Saturday night, when I caught an interview of my main man Ryan “The Genius” Gregorio in a promo for i-Witness, talking about his star player. Turns out that apart from James, they’re also featuring a couple of UAAP players with provincial roots: Aldretch Ramos of FEU and Cocoy Hermosisima of NU.

So tonight, after Saksi, tune in to Howie Severino’s “Bilog ang Bola” on GMA-7. Pretty apt that it airs on the night of Noynoy’s first SONA. I don’t think I’ve been this excited for a Howie docu since he interviewed Governor Vi.

BILOG ANG BOLA
Documentary by Howie Severino

The general public knows James Yap because of Kris Aquino and their colorful marriage, now falling apart in front of everyone.

What many may have forgotten is that James is also one of the most talented and charismatic basketball players of his generation, a phenom ever since his high school days. With the influx of Filipino-American players, James is now a rare breed - the local college player who has become a superstar in the Philippine Basketball Association.

Howie Severino and his documentation team get to know James' basketball prowess during his team Derby Ace’s dramatic playoff series against Rain or Shine. Hurting from his recent separation from Kris, and from a black eye suffered in a hard-fought game, Yap has to lead his injury-plagued team against a strong and healthy opponent. Will the phenom deliver?

While Howie's team follows Yap's playoff performance to its exciting finish, they are also shadowing two collegiate phenoms who will soon face off against each other, stars for opposing UAAP teams National University and Far Eastern University.

NU's Joseph ‘Cocoy’ Hermosisima and FEU's Aldrech Ramos are like many Filipino talented young players, rooted in poverty, and dreaming of PBA riches and becoming the next phenom. But as the spots on professional teams increasingly go to Fil-Ams, they must prove themselves first in college hoops and lead their teams to victory. But only one of them can win.

Young dreamers and troubled pro - two faces of Philippine basketball that represent the hope of rising stars all over the nation.

I-Witness airs this Monday after Saksi!

It’s a common chorus that people from UP do not care about basketball, which is not exactly accurate. The school has had tremendous contributions to Philippine basketball the past few years, despite the lack of success of the Fighting Maroons due to a lack of star players. Consider: 3 of the 10 coaching positions in the Philippine Basketball Association are occupied by UP alumni. That’s 30 percent of the most coveted jobs in the country, considering that every guy who watches PBA basketball wants to be the fucking coach of his favorite PBA team, and he’d gladly tell you why if you check out his posts in your favorite Internet basketball forum.

So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that there’s so much controversy around the Fighting Maroons’ recent coaching change. Last Thursday, UP coach Aboy Castro was absent from the team’s bench, as the school announced that he had gone on indefinite leave. Rumor had it, however, that the coach was forced to resign. Today, the team said that erstwhile team consultant Boyet Fernandez was taking over the reins as acting head coach.

I had been rooting for Castro since he took over the UP program, for a reason beyond the fact that I want the Maroons to succeed. Like me, he is a Philippine Science High School alumnus, and I like to think us nerds look out for one of our own. (Other prominent Pisay alums: writers Jessica Zafra and Butch Dalisay, former AFP chief Hermogenes Esperon, political analyst Ramon Casiple, economist Cielito Habito, PBA operations chief Rickie Santos, and PBA-ologist extraordinaire Fidel Mangonon III.)

People say that the name of the game in college basketball is recruitment, and Castro has been an aggressive and creative recruiter throughout his stint with UP, bringing in talents such as highly-touted Fil-Am Mike Silungan, former San Beda guard Alvin Padilla, and high school stars Mikee Reyes, Mark Juruena, Jett Manuel, and Joshua Saret. A few other prominent recruits are still serving their residency for the team, including 6’8” Nigerian center Alinko Mbah. Considering that the program doesn’t have the resources of other teams in the UAAP, Coach Aboy has done an excellent job in this field.

Sadly though, the success hasn’t translated on the court. Despite high expectations, the UP Fighting Maroons opened the season with a disappointing 18-point loss against the De La Salle Green Archers. The team looked ill-prepared and lost, despite the fact that its core had been playing together for a while, and even capped off the summer with a stint at the Joe Abunasser training camp. It wasn’t that the team lost, but it was in the manner in which it did; when compared to the play of a team handled by a veteran coach, like Adamson and Leo Austria, it was plain to see that Castro certainly could have done a better job.

But his coaching performance aside, there was just no excuse for the ham-fisted manner by which the UP team administration handled Castro’s departure. The team’s UAAP board representative, Leilani Gonzalo, said Castro sent a text message saying that he was taking a leave of absence from the team, but Rick Olivares reported that the coach had been asked to resign by the UP Alumni Association. Castro has kept mum on the issue – probably because he still has a large knife sticking out of his back.

I don’t know why the coaching change had to be done two games into the season, which only served to invite a media circus into this whole clusterfuck. I don’t expect anyone in the team management to be loyal to Castro, but this was just a dumb basketball move.

Fernandez is an excellent coach, and he might even be overqualified; he coached Sta. Lucia to a Philippine Cup championship two years ago, and the team was a perennial contender under his watch before it was torpedoed by economic problems. As I wrote before when I watched a live Sta. Lucia game:

I also came away very, very impressed with Sta. Lucia coach Boyet Fernandez's steady demeanor on the sidelines last night. He didn't panic when the Tigers made a run to take a double-digit lead in the third quarter, nor did he get rattled when Aquino and Espino both fouled out late in the game. His team obviously has his ear and he never has to chew out any players to make a point, and the team's faith on him looks well-placed because he really prepared them well for last night's game.

But despite his sterling resume and his obvious coaching talent, the UP administration shortchanges Fernandez by bringing him into this situation. There’s virtually no way the players can pick up his system in such a short amount of time, and he won’t be familiar enough with the Maroons to be able to get the best out of them. Then you have to consider what an issue like this does to the morale of the players. He may be a great coach, but what this team needs is a miracle worker. Actually, I don’t think even Moses can lead this team out of this mess.

I don’t know who gave the green light for this decision, but I won’t be surprised if it was hatched by the same people who wanted to change the name of the UP Fighting Maroons because, they said, some folks called the team “morons” when they lost. Well, I can point out some morons in this picture, but they’re certainly not on the team. Now you all know something I found out a long time ago: “Hindi lahat ng taga-UP, matalino.”

From his latest mailbag:

I figured out why the LeBron/Wade alliance bothers everyone beyond the irrefutable "Jordan would have wanted to beat Wade, not play with him" argument. In pickup basketball, there's an unwritten rule to keep teams relatively equal to maximize the competitiveness of the games. That's the law. If two players are noticeably better than everyone else, they don't play together, nor would they want to play together. If the two guys have any pride at all -- especially if they play similar positions -- then getting the better of each other trumps any other scenario. They want that test. Joining forces and destroying everyone else would ruin the whole point of having the game. It's like a dad kicking his young son's ass in a driveway one-on-one game. What's the point? When LeBron and Wade effectively said, "Instead of trying to whup each other, let's just crush everyone else" and "If these teams end up being uneven, we're not switching up," everyone who ever played basketball had the same reaction: "I hate guys like that."

So when my wife asked in all sincerity, "What's the big deal if they play together?" I couldn't really explain it to her other than to say, "It's a basketball thing. You just don't do it."

Makes absolute perfect sense, doesn't it?