Full disclosure: Eric Altamirano is one of my favorite Philippine sports personalities ever. He was the architect of the mini-resurgence of the UP Fighting Maroons in the mid-‘90s, after recruiting RP Youth members Bryan Gahol, Paolo Mendoza, and Ogie Gumatay to the team. I was studying at a public science high school at the time, and the Maroons’ build-up, along with the Eraserheads’ university roots, made me really excited about the idea of attending the Unibersidad ng Pilipinas for college.

But Altamirano, who was also an assistant coach at Purefoods, had to abruptly leave UP when he was tapped by the pro team to replace the acerbic Chot Reyes. Altamirano promptly led the team to the 1997 All-Filipino Championship. That was still my favorite Purefoods championship team of all time, despite the fact that they were called (ugh) the Purefoods Corned Beef Cowboys. (At the onset of the name change in the previous season, management even made the coaches wear cowboy chalecos.)

It was a masterful coaching performance for the much-maligned Altamirano. At the time, he was rumored to be the lowest-paid coach in the league – before being acquired by the San Miguel Corporation, Purefoods had a reputation for being a spendthrift ballclub – and the tension between Altamirano and the team bubbled over during the next season. After a disappointing performance in the 1998 All-Filipino, he ended up leaving in the middle of the season to coach the Mobiline/Talk N Text franchise.

By then, most Purefoods fans couldn’t muster any resentment towards their former coach; he did a great job – he led the team to a championship and a runner-up finish in four conferences coaching the team – and the barat management didn’t take care of him. Meanwhile, basketball consciousness in UP had thrived so much that by the end of the decade, the Philippine Collegian featured Altamirano (and fellow Maroon Benjie Paras) among the university’s most important alumni in its Dekada ’90 issue, alongside other luminaries such as the Eraserheads, Jessica Zafra, Yano, Malou Mangahas, Manny Villar, and Nur Misuari. (The feature on Altamirano was full of errors, but still.)

In 2001, Altamirano returned to Purefoods, but Alvin Patrimonio’s star was fading, and they were going through a rebuilding phase. A couple of years later, Altamirano shocked the PBA world when he announced, just before the season started, that he was stepping down to dedicate his time to a new mission: developing young basketball talent.

(He also handed over the reins of the team to a youthful assistant by the name of Ryan Gregorio. UGH.)

Still, I can’t blame him for his choice, because Purefoods’ loss has been the youth program’s gain. Apart from short stints as team manager and interim coach for other SMC teams in the PBA, Altamirano really has devoted all his energies towards developing the country’s young basketball talent. In 2007, he was appointed by former SBP executive director Patrick Gregorio to head the country’s National Basketball Center (NBTC), and soon afterward, was appointed by the current executive director Noli Eala to handle the country’s youth team after Franz-gate.

In the recently-concluded Fiba-Asia U-16 Championship, Altamirano’s squad finished fourth, just behind perennial powerhouses China, Korea, and Iran. They narrowly missed a medal, dropping an overtime game against Iran in the battle for third. Altamirano’s squad, led by the spectacular Kiefer Ravena, was bannered by standouts coming mostly from Metro Manila high schools.

Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that this team might not even be the best we could have sent to the tournament. Let’s take a quick detour, and think about the roster of the Powerade Team Pilipinas National Team. In Yeng Guiao’s 15-man pool, there were 7 players who played high school basketball in the Philippines. Can you guess how many of those players played high school basketball in Metro Manila? The answer, and the rest of my point, after the jump.

I’m trying to find the right words to say about the very impressive win by Smart Gilas, which is hard, especially since after the game I went out drinking with j_myxx and NeekoBoi (and their awesome dad) of Patay ang Butiki, Gary of Basketball Exchange, and Toff Rada of toffrada.

Anyway, some tipsy thoughts, in bullet points:

• Rajko Toroman deserves all the credit in the world for the job he’s done. I finally figured out why he’s so good, and it’s not because he has arcane coaching technology or that he has a higher basketball IQ than our local coaches; it’s because he outworks them. It’s obvious in their product on the court. The crisp cuts, the pinpoint passing, the excellent communication, the perfect defensive rotations (with their tiny guards knowing where to funnel their men) – these were all drilled meticulously during boring, monotonous practice sessions. I can’t imagine Filipino coaches dealing with such minutiae. Well, there’s Tim Cone, but he’s American.


• This is all reflected in Chris Tiu’s post two weeks ago about playing for Toroman: “Practices are always intense. Coach T himself is very intense in every single practice, more so during games. Sometimes we fear for his blood pressure. He is never ever late and there's no excuse for being late. He runs the drills himself while the assistant coaches support him, not the other way around like in many professional teams. He is extremely particular with the details and making the right decisions in every play offensively and defensively. He is a perfectionist.”


• In the same post, Chris Tiu talked about how he gave Mark Barroca a rosary and a St. Josemaria Escriva prayer card from his mom after they talked about Barroca’s troubles.


• Also, Chris Tiu tweeted this the other night: “Was able to get free tickets to Air Supply tonight!! Can't wait to watch one of my favorite oldie bands live :)”


• By the way, James Yap and Chris Tiu were matched up for most of the game. Yap may have won the battle of the metrosexual showbiz stars, but Tiu won the war.


• I am trying to figure out how psyche myself into rooting for Chris Tiu during international competition. I’ll have it down by 2011, I guess.


• Before the game, I was exchanging emails with Rafe Bartholomew and I offered this caveat about Powerade Team Pilipinas: I thought a well-trained PBA team like, say, Alaska, could probably beat them at this point just because they haven’t been playing together, and that some of the guys are coming off long layoffs. True enough, Powerade’s play was uglier than Mark Barroca.


• Loved how Toroman has assigned roles to players: Barroca is the only one allowed to freelance on offense, Jayvee Casio has the greenlight to shoot jumpers off their double high-pick, the power forward (Japeth Aguilar or Aldretch Ramos) can shoot off pick-and-pops, and CJ Giles can go for a quick-hitting move on the left block. Also loved the cross-pick at the elbow for Dylan Ababou that freed him up time and again for a jumper from the top of the key.


• While tonight’s victory was great, I imagine Smart Gilas would have a tougher time against other PBA teams, whose coaches usually do scouting and custom preparation for other opponents. Unlike, say, Powerade coach Yeng Guiao, who just goes ahead and coaches with his balls.

In my previous post, I described the game in my previous post as a clash of basketball culture, and a defining moment for our collective basketball soul. Let me leave with a couple of quotes. First, from noted poet and basketball fan, Sherman Alexie:

I am a holistic basketball fan.

I love the wins and losses. I love the spectacular assists and idiotic turnovers. I love the poetry of teamwork and the pornography of jump shots taken too early in the shot clock.

Next, from the Free Darko philosophy, which appropriately captures what Rafe described as the unique essence of the Filipino game:

A large part of what we've deified here has been domination-through-style, the star as an existential force who asserts himself in the face of bland, functional models of play.

Shoals expounded:

Stars belong to everyone, even if you think your way into their palace of grandeur is unique in its sparkling twists and turns. To cement your preference in great and visible objects, there has to be another moody presence in the room, an equal and opposite reaction that allows you to define them as they define you.

Just in case you’ve been under a rock lately, an exhibition match will be held tonight at the Araneta Coliseum between Powerade Team Pilipinas, the team that represented the country in the 2009 Fiba-Asia Championship, and the Smart Gilas National Developmental Team, which is being eyed to compete in the 2011 Fiba-Asia tourney.

Proceeds of the event will go to victims of Typhoon Ondoy. The upper sections will be open to the public for free, in exchange for donations of old shoes for the victims. Mico Halili reports that the event will also be broadcast on a delayed basis at 6PM over CS/9.

Rafe Bartholomew sent me this story about the start of the tension between Powerade coach Yeng Guiao and Smart Gilas coach Rajko Toroman, which happened about a year ago today. Rafe pointed out this hilarious quote from Yeng: “If [Toroman] has the technology or the system where the six-footers can beat the seven-footers and we don’t know it then I’ll carry his bag. That’s exactly what I mean. We have to prove that, ‘Pinoy tabi ka muna because undoubtedly mas-magaling ito.’”

We’ll all have enough time to talk about the game tomorrow, but what’s actually more interesting to me is the philosophical and cultural battle between the teams. Rafe actually had a couple of good posts about the subject when it came up last year, and sharing his pipe dream about how to go about building the national team:

Filipinos are right to feel proud of their place in the basketball world, both its history (which includes participation in the first Olympic Games to feature basketball in 1936, a bronze medal in the 1954 World Championships and the Philippines' routine domination of Asian tournaments until the late 1960s) and its present. The country may never reach those heights again, but I think they could reasonably aim for earning a spot in the Olympics or World Championships sometime in the next 10-15 years.

Aside from this overall goal, I think the RP team should be assembled with another purpose in mind: to share Philippine basketball's unique character. What, precisely, am I referring to? Filipino basketball players have a unique blend of creativity and toughness that makes them a joy to watch. One-on-one moves like the sidestep and the gallop dribble on the break don't exist anywhere else in the world. The wild yo-yo layups and pektos spin shots that players like Willie Miller and James Yap convert every game, at their most exhilarating, can be as exciting as Lebron James' dunks. Maybe I've just been around Pinoy basketball for too long, but I really believe that.

I happen to share this view, but I’m afraid that we’re in the minority, if you go by the reaction to the Powerade Team Pilipinas performance in the Fiba-Asia tournament. I guess this is why everyone’s drinking the Smart Gilas/Rajko Toroman Kool-Aid. Make no mistake about it, I’m going to support Smart Gilas a hundred percent when they go out to compete, but between Toroman and the whole Japeth saga, it feels a little like we’re losing our collective basketball soul.

Then again, maybe the “winning at all costs” philosophy now defines our basketball psyche. We've seen what that can do before.

But why does everyone assume then that winning with this crew is a foregone conclusion? As Rafe pointed out in the same post:

Let's dispense with one last question: What's the point of being an entertaining team if you can't win? You've got a point. But a more conservatively assembled RP Team without all the tantalizing, inconsistent talents of Willie Miller or the eccentric skill set of Arwind Santos, like the 2007 Tokushima team, wouldn't be guaranteed to do much better. If you're going to be a long shot, I say be a long shot with character, become the scrappy, wild team that's the darling of the fans, and go out in a blaze of glory.

Apart from keeping lines of communication open for people struck by tragedy in the aftermath of Typhoon Ondoy, Twitter also brings us news of a brawl between Smart Gilas import CJ Giles and Talk N Text forward Ranidel de Ocampo, in a scrimmage between the two squads bankrolled by Manny Pangilinan. Tweeting from the game was Charles Tiu, the Tiu brother whose hidden desires are not being discovered.

The incident apparently blew up after Giles threw a deliberate elbow at Ranidel, which led to the whole TNT crew ganging up on Giles. (Of course, Charles Tiu called the behavior “unprofessional.” No word on whether Chris Tiu stood in a corner while praying the rosary the whole time.)

Anyway, as Ricky Relosa and Ronnie Thompkins (or for a more recent example, Homer Se and Terrence Leather) would tell you, these things are par for the course in Philippine basketball. If Giles can’t deal with the physical play – and with his background, who knows? – it might be a looong stint for the Gilas boys in the PBA. Hopefully he’ll be able to put it all together.

This incident, though, should further spice up Monday’s exhibition between Smart Gilas and Powerade Team Pilipinas, which also features Ranidel de Ocampo. I am legitimately excited for that game already. While Smart Gilas should have the advantage considering their core has been training together over the past couple of weeks, Powerade might have a puncher’s chance if guys like Willie Miller or James Yap catch fire.