Like I said a few posts back, I welcome any insight about the Smart Gilas squad, given that a lot of people really care about the promising team. A Smart Gilas insider (I know who he is, but for obvious reasons couldn’t disclose the identity) left a very interesting comment on my last post about the team. I’m republishing the most interesting parts of his comment here for more people to see:

Mac Baracael has been playing at the four position most of the time and he has been way more effective there when compared to Japeth. Japeth hasn't been rebounding too well and has been making good decisions. Plus he has not been playing good defense.

As for the PBA players, no coach Raijko is not interested in Asi at all. He was simply using him as a measure for the size that he needs. the only PBA player that he really wants (which i think finally came out publicly today) is kelly williams because he would be a perfect fit for the 4 position because of his rebounding and shooting.

As for the guards, Toroman is completely happy with all of them and he is just waiting for Lutz to come then his lineup for guards will be complete. I know a lot of people dont like Tiu, but when he averages the most minutes on the team, that says alot for a guy who is so short. Watching their games, it would seem that it is his fault when the guards score but truth is, he does everything coach Raijko asks him to on defense. he follows their defensive philosophy to the letter and often enough it is due to his teammates' mistakes in following their help side rules on defense that lead his man to score. He is just the leader of the team and sticks his team together. A true role player indeed.

Baracael has been great and Jvee Casio has been very good too. Barroca is actually not playing so well anymore and is getting berated at times for not passing the ball and setting the plays up properly.

Like I said in the previous post, I hadn’t seen enough of Smart Gilas in Dubai, so these are more general thoughts. That said, I was thoroughly impressed with the team’s performance, and like any other Pinoy basketball fan, I am hopeful that this is the start of the team’s steady climb.

Anyway, some of my thoughts, in bullets:

• Rajko Toroman is preparing his team to defend against bigger teams, and so far it’s working. It shouldn’t come as a surprise though, because the team did well too against bigger teams in the Fiba-Asia Champions Cup last year even when CJ Giles went down. Does anyone else find it funny that the strategy works for 6’11” American imports but not for 6’3” PBA forwards? Good thing Gilas won’t have to play against Richard Yee or Chad Alonzo in the Asian Games.


• Mac Baracael was the breakout star for Gilas in the tournament, especially in the last few games. I’m curious to know, from those who’ve been watching, what position he has been playing. Back in the Champions Cup, he saw a lot of action as an undersized power forward and stepped up big-time. Interestingly, Toroman’s wish list before the Dubai tournament if he had a choice of PBA players consisted of Kelly Williams, Gabe Norwood, Jared Dillinger, and Arwind Santos, all of whom play Baracael’s small forward position. I wonder if the list still looks like that today, or if he plans to go small-ball with a wingman playing the four-spot.


• Curiously, Toroman has name-dropped Asi Taulava in interviews after the Dubai tournament as someone who could fill in the team’s needs. Interesting.


• Chris Tiu has been quite a surprise. He’s really, actually good. He’s bulked up, and he’s surprisingly athletic—although PBA 2-guards still gave him a lot of trouble. It’s not as much of a problem against Middle Eastern club teams, who probably don’t run as many isolations and pick-and-rolls for their shooting guards. He gets a lot of cheap points in the Gilas half-court set, not just off jumpers, but backdoor cuts, screen-and-rolls, etc. He’s not a superstar, but he’s mind-numbingly solid. He’s just so steady, which was probably why he kept playing well in the PBA even as the rest of his teammates were struggling. I apologize to Tiu for calling him the next Alfie Almario.
  
  (This was actually originally part of an email exchange with Rafe Bartholomew, who suggested the title: “Giving credit where credit is Tiu.” Rafe’s book on Philippine basketball, “Pacific Rims” is now available for pre-order on Amazon.)


• Is Jayvee Casio the Franz Pumaren to Mark Barroca’s Hector Calma? And is this girl the Christine Jacob in this analogy? Does that make JR Cawaling the Elmer Reyes of this team? One thing I’m sure of: Magi Sison is definitely not the next Yves Dignadice.


• As Bill Simmons would say, the turd in the punch bowl is definitely Jamal Sampson, who has reportedly been kicked off the team. I thought it would be funny to go back and read Quinito Henson’s series of stories building up Sampson’s credentials before joining Gilas. And you know what? They’re fucking HILARIOUS.

I’ve come under a bit of fire over the past week because all I’ve been writing about has been the Kris Aquino-James Yap-Mayen Austria saga. It’s a perfectly valid point; there are so many other things happening in the Philippine sports world apart from that, and I could understand the frustration of people who read this blog. In particular, the Smart Gilas Pilipinas team has done very well in the Dubai International Basketball Tournament, coming home with a bronze medal, and readers are justifiably upset that I haven’t given this any attention.

Here’s my reason: I just haven’t had the time. It’s a reason, and not an excuse.

And I know that, yes, I have been posting about all the details of all the crap going on with Kris and James (Krijames?), but the thing is, not all blog entries are equal. That is, some posts just take more energy than others, and for the past week, cupcake-gate offered the path of least resistance.

Consider:

1. In my day job, each of us has been assigned a presidential candidate to profile, and we have to keep track of our candidate. I happen to be assigned to Kris Aquino’s brother, so it’s actually part of my job to keep track of what’s happening with her, especially since the issue took on a political color early on. It’s weird, but yeah, I seriously have to keep track of these stories for work. Most of it anyway. The rest, I’m just chismoso.


2. I am a Purefoods fan, and I’ve been a fan of the team before I’ve been a fan of pretty much anything else in my life. Lord knows I would stop being a fan of the team if I could. It hasn’t been fun having to cheer for the “Tender Juicy Hotdogs” or the “Chunkee Giants,” and neither has watching Ryan Gregorio’s coaching performance year in and year out.


3. Kris is compelling. I’m sorry, but she just is. Even Lourd de Veyra admits as much on his blog.

So basically, putting together a blog post on the issue would involve the following:

1. Taking the juiciest part of articles that I’ve already read (and, if available, video I’ve already seen)


2. Writing a short note tying them all together


3. Writing a joke about Ryan “The Genius” Gregorio and/or Jondan Salvador

Voila! I have a post that, judging from the amount of traffic generated by the blog last week, people are actually interested in. Plus, I can work on it bit by bit, over the course of the work day, during breaks. I put it up whenever I’m done with it.

Now, consider the Smart Gilas run in Dubai. I would have loved to write about it every step of the way. Like every other Pinoy sports fan, I am curious as to how they would perform. How would Chris Tiu handle defending opposing shooting guards? Without Sampson, would centers Jason Ballesteros and Greg Slaughter follow Rajko Toroman’s defensive help-side rules to protect the guards who will funnel their man to the baseline? Would Toroman go with the small-ball line-up that worked so well for the team during the Fiba-Asia Champions Cup, but he ditched during the Gilas stint in the PBA? Would the Dubai crowd be terrified of Mark Barroca, or will they find him exotic? And so on.

Unfortunately, I’ve had neither the time nor the energy to catch their games on live stream. And it’s not like the news reports of the games have been very informative; basically, we just find out that the other team had big imports, but our guys had bigger hearts, Baracael/Tiu/Barroca/Casio hit big shots, and we won.

(On this note, let me point out that while I’ve gone after Rick Olivares quite a few times on this blog, I still think he did an excellent job covering the team during the Champions Cup last May.)

I wish I had something to add to the discussion but, well, I didn’t. Blogging regularly, and blogging well, about the Gilas stint in Dubai takes a lot of time, and frankly, I just haven’t had the time.

But like I said, that’s a reason, and not an excuse. Insightful analysis and different takes on the Gilas program would be appreciated by a lot of people: hardcore Pinoy basketball fans, casual fans who have gotten back into basketball because of the promise and potential of the Smart Gilas program, pervs who jerk off to grainy streaming video of Chris Tiu, and Alain Katigbak.

So here’s the deal. If anyone out there wants to take on the task of writing about Gilas, go start your own sports blog, and I promise to link to it. Better yet, you could write posts right here on my blog, send them to j@firequinito.com and I’ll run them unedited so you can give me the Jimmy Kimmel-on-Jay Leno treatment if you want. I’ll even buy you a beer. My only requirement would be that the post be original, well-written (with correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation, very important!), insightful and/or funny.

Game?

Seriously:



Idol! Hehe.

[ H/T: Karen Anne Diez on Twitter ]

A couple of nights back, I was chatting with Rafe Bartholomew to congratulate him on making it to Quinito Henson’s column (an honor that falls somewhere between his Fulbright scholarship and his Bakekang television appearance). Quinito quoted Rafe, who wrote a feature on the Knicks guard last season for Seattle Weekly, as texting that Nate Robinson might have Filipino blood through his mother, and the Philippine Star columnist raised the possibility of the defending NBA slam dunk champion playing for the country in international competition.

Needless to say, message board fanatics all over the Internet virtually wet themselves over the idea. They started discussing what it would take for Robinson to eschew playing for the Knicks and the NBA after the season to concentrate full time on Smart Gilas. Others, meanwhile, were cool to the proposal, saying that Robinson’s entry to the team would hamper the development of Smart Gilas ace point guard Mark Barroca. Anyhoo, I’ve been hearing that the SBP has since been in contact with Nate Robinson’s mother.

The conversation between Rafe and I though moved quickly from Nate and Quinito to another sky-walking figure in Philippine basketball, Billy Ray Bates. “The Black Superman” was recently honored as the 40th greatest player in Portland Trailblazers history by the Oregonian, and Blazers beat writer Jason Quick was able to track down the former import in New York for a feature that came out the day before Christmas. It paints a bleak picture of Bates, who has been in-and-out of jail and rehab since his playing days: “He is desperate for employment, and says he is attending a Back to Work program in Manhattan that offers job referrals. However, in order to work he must first gain a New York identification, which requires a birth certificate, which he can't find, but is working on, and should be done tomorrow. He has no bank account and usually no more than five dollars to his name. When he does have money, it's because he has flatly asked someone for it. He is intensely engaging, highly likeable and willing to speak of his missteps.”

I don’t know if the feature is sadder than the series of stories Quinito himself wrote on Bates last year. Bates tracked Quinito down via Mico Halili, telling the writer that he was planning to fly to Manila to do personal appearances for the PBA to reconnect with his fans, and asking for help in contacting his old sponsors, a sneaker company that have closed down a long time ago. Quinito glossed over Bates’ sad personal history, and played off the former import’s Philippine return as a real possibility, even teasing a comeback of Bates’ old sneaker company; to me, it came off like a very cruel joke on a sad old man.