The buzz is that after winning the Philippine Cup championship, Purefoods will be changing its name to promote the company’s B-Meg line of animal feeds. An NBN Sports report said that the new name will be the ‘Derby Ace Llamados’ after B-Meg’s gamefowl feeds brand. I don’t mind the Derby Ace name, but do they really have to pander so shamefully to the lo-diyes crowd with the Llamados nickname? Why not the Derby Ace Slashers, which is way cooler?

Then again, the team is already currently nicknamed the ‘Tender Juicy Giants’ which has to be one of the most awful (and frankly, kinda gay) nicknames in the history of basketball, so rooting for the Llamados wouldn’t be so bad, right? Also it could’ve been worse, as the team could’ve been named after hog pellets or tilapia feeds. Or chick boosters.

Still, part of me thinks that this is San Miguel Corporation management’s punishment for Purefoods for kicking San Miguel’s ass in the semifinals.

Anyway, a lot of interesting stuff around the Internet after Purefoods’ masterful victory over the Alaska Aces last night.

• You should all start checking out IV Point Play, an impressive new Pinoy sports blog by Polo Bustamante and Carlo Araneta. The guys also produce a pretty entertaining podcast called ‘From the Stands’ (episode 4 was particularly good). Both guys behind the blog are Alaska fans, so I enjoyed their analysis of how Purefoods won: “So the Purefoods TJ Giants are kings of the Philippine Basketball world, and they totally deserve it, while Alaska, for the second straight year, is left searching for what prevents them from taking the next step forward. Funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same.”


• Jude Turcuato attended the game live last night, and raved about the King of the PBA, James Yap: “A smooth operator, he doesn't get too excited or too down. He is like a well oiled machine built to play on the court and get the job done. He is the best offensive player in the PBA right now and it seems his defense is catching up as well. You can tell that although he doesn’t talk much, his teammates rely on him to lead them and James embraces the responsibility. James is a player who has the fans holding their breath in anticipation whenever he has the ball. Very few have that ability.”
  
  There’s also this interesting note on Jude’s discussion with Coach Ryan before the team drafted Yap in 2004: “When Coach Ryan told me that James is the best player in the draft, I thought he was in one of his hyperbolic raves again. I worked with him in the UAAP panel and a little in the PBA and he did have a tendency to get over excited about basketball, which I think is great.”


• The last several games of Purefoods are available on Bit Torrent at IP Mart. You can download using the using these credentials – username: tjgiants2010/password: tjgiants. As always, with these things, kindly seed.


• Finally, Ginebra fans taking on Alaska with a little help from the April Boys:

Rafe Bartholomew, author of Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin' in Flip-Flops and the Philippines' Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball (available for pre-order now!), wrote a guest lecture discussing Philippine basketball for FreeDarko.com, one of the best basketball sites in the world. It’s certainly worth a read, as most of his stuff is, and continues his theme of putting over the unique Filipino brand of basketball for the rest of the world.

I also appreciated that Rafe decided to go with Samboy Lim highlight videos to kick things off. I came to know how special Samboy was pretty early, when I entered first grade in Letran. Officially, the Colegio listed St. John the Baptist as its patron saint, but everyone at school prayed to Samboy for divine intercession. It had been four years since he led Letran to a third straight NCAA championship, but his presence still loomed over the school.



In the PBA, fans of any persuasion went apeshit whenever Norman Black sent the Skywalker to the scorer’s table. Even the hardcore barangay in the bleachers of the Ultra couldn’t contain their excitement. Mostly it was because he was such an electric player, but part of it was because he was injured so often (with his high-risk style), so any minutes he could spend on the court for us to watch seemed so precious.

Unlike Atoy Co who belonged to Crispa, or Jaworski who belonged to Toyota/Ginebra, or Patrimonio who belonged to Purefoods, Samboy Lim was in the public domain. He belonged to not just to San Miguel, but to all of us.

Ok, I don’t know what happened, but suddenly everyone’s emailing and commenting on Fire Quinito. Maybe soon Quinito will add his two cents too. Earlier tonight, coach Chot Reyes left a comment on my previous post addressing, among other things, PBA officiating, this blog, and me calling his actions a dick move:

First of all, I really like your blog. I think it really rocks!!! Irreverent, objective, witty, straight to the point. Just as sports reportage should be. Yes, even when it attacks the 'numerous dick moves' of Chot Reyes. :)

You're right, my coaching career has been marked by greater disappointments than achievements. In the game 4 incident, I know you (and a lot of sports fans) disagree with, as you so aptly call it, 'the dick move.'

But more than the numbers quoted by the 'patay and butiki' boys, I just wanted to inform you that we indeed followed established PBA protocol w regards officiating:

1. We wrote a letter to the PBA Commissioner dated January 25, 2010 even before the series started, already citing several calls/non-calls in our previous Ginebra games. He replied by admitting that the officials did err in four of the twelve instances, with the assurance that the same would not happen again;


2. After game two which we won, we sent a videotape through Assistant Coach Bong Ravena indicating questionable calls/non-calls by referee Aldaba, requesting that he be prevented from officiating our next games. Commish responded by, according to Mr. Ramil Cruz, insisting Aldaba be put into the pool of refs for games 3 and 4;


3. The morning after game 4, we presented to the Commish video showing how, if referee Aldaba had just done his job and called a foul on Eric Menk for throwing Mac Cardona to the floor, then the play involving the Ranidel de Ocampo Flagrant Foul should not even have happened. He agreed that a foul should have been called on Menk but denied our request for reconsideration and upheld the Flagrant Foul 2 call.

The above shows how we did follow the established protocol for officiating concerns. Unfortunately, it also shows that our concerns went unheeded – that is, until the walkout.

Perhaps due to the walkout, game 5 officiating showed that, indeed, the refs are capable of calling games fairly. We lost that game fair and square, and I credit Ginebra for hitting 14 of their 30 3-pt shots in the game that mattered most. They deserved to win.

In response to your comment on how far we will take this, our position is, as far as necessary for officiating in the PBA to improve, not only for TNT, but for all the teams. And scathing commentaries like yours can only help. After all, it's not easy compiling call logs and editing footage just to show the PBA technical group the day following a stressful game. But, we gotta do what we gotta do.

Again, I do not mind being criticized, questioned and contradicted, as long as the comments are made responsibly and respectfully.

All the best and keep on punchin!

Thanks for being a good sport, coach!

Let me just add three things:

1. I sincerely hope that Talk N Text really does pursue changes to improve the officiating, and I hope they approach it by building consensus among the rest of the members of the PBA board. It really behooves the whole PBA community, including the San Miguel Corporation teams, to push for better refereeing, and all Pinoy basketball fans, including fans of Ginebra, ought to support these efforts.


2. Coach Chot was being disingenuous when he said that “his career is marked by greater disappointments than achievements.” He is the only coach to have won three All-Filipino championships with three different teams (Purefoods, Coke, Talk N Text), and as I pointed out in a previous post, he had taken three teams to the Philippine Cup finals in the last three full All-Filipino tournaments he coached prior to this one.


3. I grew up watching Purefoods games live at the Cuneta Astrodome, when Coach Chot was handling the team (back when he dressed up for games in a tie like a yuppie, not like now when he’s always in fashionably tight clothes like he’s going to do a song number on ASAP). Anyway, he brought all the antics, theatrics (i.e. kneeling on the floor to plead to the referees), and yeah, dick moves on the sideline. One time, an offensive foul was called on a Purefoods player (it might have been Bong Ravena), and he went BALLISTIC at the referee. After the referee walked away, he shouted to the bench (I’m paraphrasing from a memory from 15 years ago), “Kapag yang si [name of referee] ang nasa baseline, palaging charging ang tawag!” Purefoods won the game after a crucial defensive stop by Rey Evangelista, who drew a charge in the dying seconds. Of course, it was called by the same referee who called the earlier charge.

After a crazy quarterfinal round, the stage is set for the PBA Philippine Cup final four. The cast features 3 teams that belong to the San Miguel Corporation, which again reinforces perceptions by the league’s critics that the PBA is an SMC league. Some even say that the PBA is set up so that SMC teams would always end up on the winning end of most tournaments.

The grand conspiracy argument doesn’t hold much water. If it were true, there’s no way Sta. Lucia would have won the 2008 Philippine Cup over Purefoods in a close seven-game series wherein James Yap was suspended for one game for the same flagrant 2 penalty called on Ranidel de Ocampo last Friday. Imagine David Stern suspending Kobe Bryant on an iffy call in an NBA finals series against a team like the Milwaukee Bucks.

That doesn’t mean to say that SMC teams do not have an advantage. The PBA landscape today gives the rich teams a leg up when it comes to acquiring talent, and each of the SMC teams have taken advantage to build up its arsenal.

By my count, Ginebra, Purefoods, and San Miguel have acquired a total of 19 players through lopsided trades over the past 5 PBA seasons. The trend started prior to the 2006-07 season, when Ginebra and San Miguel ransacked the roster of erstwhile sister team Coca-Cola just before the corporation let go of the franchise. Over the next several years, each SMC team found more willing partners in Red Bull and Air 21 who would let go of their star players for a song.

	Acquired by	From	Season	Notes
Marc Pingris	Purefoods	Air 21	2005-06	Traded to San Miguel for Enrico Villanueva in 2008, acquired back by Purefoods in 2009
Rudy Hatfield	Ginebra	Coke	2006-07	Went off the deep end after leading Ginebra to a Philippine Cup championship
Billy Mamaril	Ginebra	Coke	2006-07
Rafi Reavis	Ginebra	Coke	2006-07	Traded to Purefoods in 2009
Ronald Tubid	Ginebra	Air 21	2006-07
Lordy Tugade	San Miguel	Red Bull	2006-07
Enrico Villanueva	San Miguel	Red Bull	2007-08	Traded to Purefoods in 2008, traded to Ginebra in 2009
Larry Fonacier	San Miguel	Red Bull	2007-08	Traded to Alaska in 2008
Junthy Valenzuela	Ginebra	Red Bull	2007-08
Mick Pennisi	San Miguel	Red Bull	2008-09
Rich Alvarez	Purefoods	Red Bull	2008-09	Traded to Ginebra in 2009
Cyrus Baguio	Ginebra	Air 21/BK	2008-09
JC Intal	Ginebra	Air 21/BK	2008-09
Doug Kramer	Ginebra	Air 21/BK	2008-09
Homer Se	Ginebra	Air 21/BK	2008-09
Don Allado	Purefoods	Air 21/BK	2008-09
Celino Cruz	Purefoods	Air 21/BK	2008-09	Traded to Ginebra in 2009
KG Canaleta	Purefoods	Air 21/BK	2008-09
Arwind Santos	San Miguel	Air 21/BK	2009-10

The data does not reflect the indirect benefits of one SMC team acquiring new star players to its sister teams. For example, San Miguel benefitted when Ginebra acquired Hatfield, Mamaril, and Reavis from Coke, because it opened the door for the Beermen to trade for Ginebra’s Rommel Adducul, who had become expendable. When San Miguel acquired Villanueva, Adducul was shipped to Purefoods. Pingris found his way back to Purefoods from San Miguel this season after the arrival of Santos to the Beermen’s camp.

I also did not include in the table the first round draft picks acquired by the Beermen from Coke during the ransacking. San Miguel used the second overall pick in 2007 to draft Samigue Eman, and the third pick in the 2008 draft to trade for Jay Washington. These were non-trivial assets.

Of course, it’s not just the SMC teams doing this. Talk N Text has been just as brazen about stockpiling talent over the past several years. Another rich franchise, Coca-Cola, seems to be going in that direction.

Meanwhile, the Photokina (Red Bull/Barako Bull) and Lina (Air 21/Burger King) franchises have had no scruples about letting their players go to the highest bidders. Sta. Lucia, a franchise beset by financial difficulty, might be going down the same path. In the PBA board, only Alaska and Rain or Shine might be inclined to pursue changes to the system, and even then they are vastly outnumbered.

There hasn’t been nearly enough outrage from the fans. I tried to incite outrage when Burger King sold off Santos to San Miguel, but it was met by general apathy. The Filipino basketball fan’s mindset is rarely about playing fair, and mostly about getting an advantage at any cost. It runs true from college basketball – seriously, check out the message board discussions on high school prospects by fans of elite schools – up to the pros. Hell, think about how Smart Gilas fans wanted Japeth Aguilar on the team, at any cost, relationships be damned.

We want our teams to cut every corner to get the best players. Should it come as any surprise when they do exactly that?

Ladies and gentlemen, Patrick “Pato” Gregorio, Smart Sports head (and Ryan “The Genius” Gregorio’s brother), had this to say about the Talk N Text walkout:

“We were in the process of sorting things out when all of a sudden, we were told it was too late,” said Smart Sports head Patrick Gregorio who joined Vargas and Talk ‘N’ Text manager Virgil Villavicencio in a huddle with Barrios. “I thought the whole thing was just poorly handled. We weren’t even informed about the time technicality.”

YOU WALKED OUT! The whole mess started because your coach acted like a baby over a bad call, and your management condoned him! You know how the situation could have been handled better? BY NOT WALKING OUT!

Jeezus. I guess the “genius” gene runs in the family.

Also, how about Quinito Henson? I hate to belabor the point, because it’s already the title of the blog, but how far does this guy have his head up his ass? No, the problem was not a result of a “failure to communicate,” the problem was a result of one coach acting like a total dick and ordering a walkout, and his management backing him up!

Meanwhile, the Ginebra braintrust came up with a very interesting response to the free-throw disparity claim by Talk N Text. According to coach Jong Uichico, Talk N Text committed the 3rd most fouls during the regular season, while Ginebra committed the least. Talk N Text also was no. 9 in terms of drawing fouls, while Ginebra is the 3rd most-fouled team. Again, this doesn’t necessarily prove that Talk N Text’s allegations are true or not, but at least it gives some context to the issue.