Philippine basketball has started to develop a small but vibrant community on Twitter. The Sweetest Tweets is a round-up of the best messages, in 140 characters or less.



Oh, we’re all going to miss Rod’s tweets while he’s away. I hope his date with Destiny finally goes through.



Yeah, tell ‘em Rick! I completely agree! Sino ba ‘yang mga SBP official na yan?! Mamaya pati mga nanay at tatay nila, isama pa nila sa Taipei!



Hacheche-pache!



I still remember Joey Mente throwing water bottles at the Taiwanese crowd. Iloilo Megavoltz for the win!



I’m sure Cesca Litton is flattered to get compliments from the PBA’s resident fashion expert.



I think Bo Perasol traded for Paolo Mendoza just so they can have isaw at UP after practice with Marvin Cruz.



Yeah! Fire Quinito!



Simpleng yabang lang din ‘tong si Cabaggie, eh noh?



Yeah, this is what this feature is here for, to document Robbie Reyes’ Twilight fandom.



Also, to keep track of James Ty III’s undying love for Jessica “Jessilicious” Mendoza. Keep fighting the good fight, James!

Rafe Bartholomew’s seminal book about Philippine basketball came out in bookstores yesterday, and you should really get a copy if you’re any kind of fan of Philippine basketball. I got mine last night at Fully Booked in Rockwell, grabbing the last copy in the store; the lady at customer service said they had four copies in stock, all of which ended up sold. The books are supposed to be available at Fully Booked, Powerbooks, and National Bookstore outlets, but because they usually keep a low number of copies on stock, the availability is hit-or-miss. Or, you can grab a copy from Amazon.

Full disclosure: My name appears on the acknowledgements, right between Quinito Henson and Ronnie Nathanielsz, which I think was by design. But that’s not the reason why I’m recommending the book; I started skimming last night and couldn’t stop reading. I finally put it down with just about fifty pages to go (and it’s a 400-page book, pretty much longer than most recent basketball books not written by Bill Simmons). Not coincidentally, I ended up awfully late for work today.

I should have more on the book in the next couple of days, but meanwhile, check out the book trailer above, or Rafe’s piece about Philippine basketball history on Slam Online, his profile on Gelf and this interview on The Awl. UPDATE: Another lengthy interview on Sports Crackle Pop.

I have been harping about this on Twitter for a while now, but I just wanted to put on record that I really can’t stand the play-by-play work of Paolo Trillo. It’s nothing personal. He just plainly sucks.

So what’s wrong with him?

Let me borrow a line from ‘Almost Famous’: To begin with… everything.

There’s no redeeming value about him as an announcer. At least Quinito Henson is eloquent, even if the dumbest shit comes out of his mouth most of the time. At least Boom Gonzales can make games seem exciting, even if he comes off as a smarmy douchebag most of the time.

But Paolo Trillo? He can’t even string together two sentences in rhythm. He has trouble keeping up with the action that he’s supposed to call. He never says anything funny or insightful, because he always struggles just to find things to say. He never gets excited at any of the right moments. And to make it all worse, he has this nasal voice that’s just painful to the ears. (And yes, I’ve heard my voice on tape. I sound like Nino Muhlach. But that’s why I’m a blogger, not a play-by-play guy.)

It wasn’t so bad when he was just a courtside interviewer, when he only had to be on air for about a minute at a time. All he had to do was memorize his vapid spiel and try to look cute for the camera – basically what Jinno Rufino does today. But as a guy calling the whole game? He’s torture.

He’s been at it for a few years now, and he hasn’t improved a bit. It boils down to two things: either he’s lazy, or he’s just plain hopeless. Honestly, I don’t know which is worse.

This wouldn’t be such an issue, in and of itself. After all, diehard fans like me won’t skip a game just because I don’t like the announcer. But the problem with Trillo at the announcer’s booth is that it bumps off much, much better announcers like Patricia Hizon and Magoo Marjon.

Take Patricia, for example. The odds are stacked against her just because she’s a woman calling a macho game, but once you get past that, you see a good announcer who’s still getting better. She ends up with the shit assignments no one wants to do, like the PBA out-of-town games. She also does play-by-play for PBL games and courtside interviews.

Magoo should be a regular anchor on the panel by now, and I have no fucking clue why he’s not. He also handles PBA games on the radio, but curiously gets very few play-by-play assignments on TV, which is odd, because he always does a good job. Like Patricia, he also anchors the PBL, and spends most of his PBA TV work doing courtside, for which he’s honestly over-qualified.

It’s a fucking joke that Paolo Trillo continues to call games while Magoo and Patricia do shit work on the sidelines. Then again, getting assignments for the PBA TV lineup is probably not a meritocracy. Otherwise, Paolo Trillo would need to have more things going for him than just his surname.

Haven’t done a bullet/links post in a while, so here we go:

• Rafe Bartholomew had a lengthy, two-part interview at In the Bullpen (part 1, part 2), which delves not just into basketball, but Philippine culture and history as well.


• Ronnie Nathanielsz gave his new favorite sports patron, Manny Pangilinan, a tongue bath (as Rick Reilly would say) in last Friday’s column to show his support for MVP’s plagiarism issue. I laughed out loud when, in an effort to praise the PLDT chair, Nathanielsz compares Pangilinan to… Ferdinand Marcos!


• I may not agree with a lot of what he says, but I always look forward to reading Coach Chot Reyes’ candid Twitter feed. Last week, when Manila Bulletin’s Waylon Galvez was raising muck about his performance and hinting at the possibility of Talk N Text replacing him with Norman Black (who was recently hired as a team consultant), Reyes himself set the record straight: “Obviously, the writer doesn’t know what he’s talking about. My players and I get into it all the time. Better silence than sulking.” He also hints at Galvez having an issue with him: “Besides, that writer has always had the ‘hots’ for me ever since. I teach my players to embrace conflict.” Apparently, he embraces conflicts with sportswriters too. Awesome.


• Maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Pinoy Fight Scribe, one of the most promising boxing/MMA Pinoy blogs, is run by a guy from Talisay City in Cebu. I have been wondering why there aren’t more Pinoy boxing blogs with original content starting up. Hopefully the writer continues to update his blog regularly.
  
  UPDATE: Another promising Pinoy boxing blog: Underdogboxing.


• I really enjoyed the POC Sportacular’s two-part feature on UAAP rumors by Adrian Dy, culled from various sources. Who doesn’t love rumors? This is the type of thing I wish the guys over there would focus on, instead of more NBA recaps that could be found on every other sports site on the Internet. I would click on one of Dy’s NBA recaps and think, “Yeah, I liked this column better when Kelly Dwyer wrote it.” I hope they continue their coverage of the pre-season college tournaments, and not just when Ateneo is playing.


• We all know Quinito Henson has a few templates he regurgitates in his columns. When it comes to reinforcements, his specialties include Import Column A: the “Player with a rough background overcoming the odds” inspiring feature; and Import Column B: the “Import that misbehaves deserves to be fired” column. A couple of years ago, he ended up writing one of each for Sta. Lucia import Lee Benson, hilariously within two weeks of each other. Here he is at it again, writing Import Column A for Derby Ace import Lorrenzo Wade (whose name he misspells throughout the column). Hopefully he doesn’t have to write Import Column B anytime soon.


• Last week, I worked on a couple of reports for the day job on online campaigning and mobile campaigning. GMANews.TV also ran the online campaign story, and Fire Quinito makes a cameo in that website.


• While we’re on it, imagine this: before the big fight, one contender dares his opponent to take a test. Floyd Mayweather asking Manny Pacquiao to agree to a drug test? Nope, Manny Villar daring Noynoy Aquino to do a psych exam.