Ah crap. On the heels of the launch of Rafe Bartholomew’s book on Philippine basketball, one that would hopefully give the rest of the world a more nuanced look at our passion for the game – something beyond “Hey, those Filipino guys are really short, and they play a game for tall men?” and “They have a team called the Hotdogs?! The Tender Juicy Hotdogs?!” – comes this entry on Deadspin about our beloved Chris Tiu.

Continue reading "Deadspin joins the Tiu-perman bandwagon"

I know I said that updates were going to be light this week because I’m busy with the day job with the elections right around the corner, but I just needed to blog this because it concerns the whole Philippine basketball community. I never thought I’d see the words “Chris Tiu” and “Lihim na romansa” together in a headline, but here’s the big news, from Gerry Ocampo of People’s Journal:

Continue reading "Chris Tiu and Daina Menezes deny rumors that they are secretly dating"

Okay, programming advisory: the blog will be light on updates over the next couple of weeks because of the day job. Anyway, here’s some stuff I wanted to pass along:

Continue reading "Monday night bullets, featuring Smart Gilas, Unilab, Marlou Aquino, and Mon Tulfo"

I was just totally going to ignore this story, but a whole bunch of people – including a couple of guys connected to Smart Gilas – kept bugging me about TMZ showing clips of Smart Gilas and Chris Tiu after their loss a couple of days ago to the LA Slam of the ABA. The whole TMZ episode is available online (click on the 4/27 ep) and Gilas appears about a few minutes in.

Continue reading "Smart Gilas and Chris Tiu’s pretty face make it to TMZ"

After running roughshod over not-too-elite competition in Australia and getting their asses handed to them by excellent professional teams in Serbia, Smart Gilas took its act to the United States to play several minor league teams from the American Basketball Association. A couple of days ago, Gilas began its campaign by going up against the ABA team based in San Diego (which of course in German means whale’s vagina). It was an exciting match, with birthday boy Mark Barroca sinking a three-point shot with 4.3 seconds left to lead the Filipinos to a 94-93 victory.

Continue reading "Smart Gilas planning to join shitty American minor league"

Boy, it was a busy Easter weekend for news, wasn’t it? Heathens who didn’t take the time to reflect for their sins (or who couldn’t book a trip to Boracay) and were stuck on Facebook all weekend have heard the flap over Manny Pangilinan’s commencement speeches. Pangilinan was actually invited to speak at two graduation ceremonies for the Ateneo de Manila University, one for the School of Science & Engineering and the School of Management, and another for the School of Social Sciences and Humanities.

Continue reading "Manny Pangilinan quits Ateneo over graduation speech flap, but Chris Tiu doesn’t know how to quit him"

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:

Continue reading "Random thoughts from a Smart Gilas insider"

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:

Continue reading "Thoughts on Smart Gilas, after their sensational bronze-winning performance at the Dubai International Basketball Tournament"

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.

Continue reading "Kris Aquino, Smart Gilas, and the anatomy of a blog post"

Apart from troubled pasts, infamous stints in the Philippines, and local columnists drawing knives after they left, there’s one more thing that Lee Benson and CJ Giles had in common: they signed more lucrative deals immediately after leaving the Philippines.

Right after his tumultuous stint with Sta. Lucia, Benson burned the hoops in China and Puerto Rico, without much incident. Meanwhile, Giles flew off to Lebanon to sign with club team Al-Riyadi, the richest team in the Lebanese league, to replace NBA veteran Mamadou N’Diaye.

Continue reading "The CJ Giles saga brings up even more questions for Smart Gilas"