Philippine basketball has started to develop a small but vibrant community on Twitter, and Fire Quinito’s newest feature, The Sweetest Tweets, round up the best messages, in 140 characters or less.



Former Ginebra import Rod Nealy, who led his new team Rain or Shine to back-to-back wins in the ongoing Fiesta Conference, is apparently not a fan of Ginebra’s Denham Brown, who was cut, or should I say exported, by the team this week.



Barako center Robby Reyes shows a little sense of humor after a game wherein Derby Ace import Cliff Brown served him a NASTY facial. That one ought to make it to all the highlight reels this week.



Rain or Shine’s Sol Mercado has a request for his co-player of the week, James Yap. Hey, now that James is single, maybe he and Sol could hang out and go clubbing or something.



Ok, I don’t think Rick gets the hang of this whole sports tweeting thing just yet.



Wise words from the guy who runs our national basketball program. Magaling siguro siyang sumulat ng love letter.

• Noynoy Aquino was proclaimed the 15th president of the Philippines yesterday, which would make James Yap part of the extended First Family. Funny, even though he could end up winning his second MVP award and lead his team to a sweep of the two PBA tournaments, he still wouldn’t have had as good a year as his brother-in-law has had.


• Jeffrey Cariaso, meanwhile, did a Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and decided to defer his retirement. He actually played well last night in Alaska’s one-point loss to Talk N Text, and even had a chance to win the game in the closing seconds, but his 15-footer rattled out of the rim. That would have been too perfect. The only bad thing about The Jet’s comeback is now I have to revise some things for the review of Pacific Rims that I had written (Jeff is a major character in the book, and as I understand, still maintains close touch with author Rafe Bartholomew).


• A couple of days ago, I wrote about how the only qualification for Chito Salud to be the next PBA commissioner seems to be his surname, which he shares with his father, former commissioner Rudy Salud. Then the very next day, his dad’s buddy, Ronnie Nathanielsz, spent a thousand words building up the young lawyer, just stopping short of proclaiming that Salud could turn water into wine. My favorite part: “Rudy Salud’s charming wife Pampin, mother of Chito, has always been a prayerful person who constantly infuses the essence of love of God and guidance from Him that indeed shall show us the way every moment of our lives.” Uh-huh.


• I’m not gonna lie: I’m absolutely thrilled that about the upcoming invitational tournament featuring Smart Gilas playing against teams from Jordan and China. I know he’s not exactly my favorite person, but credit must go to SBP executive director Noli Eala, especially if he pulls this off successfully. The tournament would be more exciting if the PBA accepts the SBP’s invitation for a couple of teams to participate in the pocket tournament. The tournament will be the first opportunity for the team to test out new reinforcement Marcus Douthit.
  
  UPDATE: Fidel Mangonon tells me on Twitter that the schedule could not work for PBA teams.
  
  UPDATE 2: Noli Eala tweets that Ginebra and Talk N Text will participate as guest teams, on the condition that the games be purely exhibition in nature.


• My favorite post from the past week: Pinoy Fight Scribe’s Mark Lorenzana transcribing Dyan Castillejo’s gems of wisdom from the broadcast of the Miguel Cotto-Yuri Foreman fight. Hilarity ensues: “Araaay! Aray! Ako ang napapa-aray! (laughs). Ang sakit!”

There’s something curious about Chito Salud’s appointment as deputy commissioner of the PBA by the league’s Board of Governors last week. This year’s chairman, Lito Alvarez – aka the mama san of Air 21’s virtual brothel of up-and-coming PBA players who will end up for sale sooner or later – described the decision as unanimous when it was announced about a week ago.

The very next day though, a couple of governors spoke to GMANews.TV about the move, and it turns out, both of them had reservations about Salud’s appointment, as well as another matter that the board discussed in the same meeting: the granting of Purefoods, San Miguel Corporation’s third franchise in the PBA, voting rights on non-basketball matters.

As one anonymous governor noted, the appointment of Salud gives him the inside track to become as the next commissioner of the league, and as such, there should have been more careful scrutiny about the move.

Salud was one of two final candidates to replace Noli Eala a couple of years ago; there was, however, a deadlock among governors between Salud and Lambert Ramos, a telecommunications executive. Unable to break the tie, the board decided to offer the post instead to Barrios, who had been acting as the league’s officer-in-charge. At the time, Salud was serving as Barrios’ consultant on legal affairs as well.

I still wonder, as I did back then, exactly what made Salud qualified for the position of PBA commissioner; precious little is known about his background, other than the fact that he’s a lawyer and his father Rudy is a former PBA commissioner who is close to former Marcos crony and San Miguel Corporation chairman Danding Cojuangco – the elder Salud was campaign manager for Cojuangco’s 1992 presidential run.

We do know that in the last elections, Salud the younger served as spokesman for erstwhile Makati Vice Mayor Ernesto Mercado’s failed bid for the town’s mayoralty race. Salud was originally supposed to be Mercado’s running mate, but the former backed out in favor of another candidate, Romulo Pena, who ended up winning.

(Later, Salud was involved in a political organization that his father put up called Volunteer Movement for Good Governance, which campaigned for Manny Villar, Bong Revilla, and Mercado. Oddly enough, the group counted among its members Aniano Desierto, whose tenure as Ombudsman was marred by charges of incompetence, inefficiency, and corruption – the exact opposite of good governance.)

I have no quarrel with Atty. Salud – for all I know, he just might be the kind of brilliant man that the PBA needs going forward. But everything we know about him so far, as a lawyer and as a spokesman for a losing small-time politician, doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

As far as we know, the best thing going for Salud right now is his surname. Then again, we did just elect Noynoy Aquino as president, didn’t we?

Rafe Bartholomew makes an excellent point in the comments section of the previous post about Smart Gilas’ search for an import:

How solid were the Jones/Barron/Butch/Sims rumors to begin with? Just because Gilas is interested in the player doesn't mean they're about to sign. Also, thanks to the intrepid reporting of the PhilStar writers who cover Gilas, I never once saw a quote from any naturalization candidate or his agent that the interest was mutual. How serious were these guys about joining Gilas? We don't really know, all we heard were Frankie Lim and Noli Eala saying positive things, which is what they're supposed to do. It's really the media's failure to report these stories thoroughly.

Also, it seems like trying to naturalize a big man out of the D-League is a mistake, not because those guys are not the best players available -- they probably are -- but because their choice to earn pennies in the NBDL instead of big bucks in Europe and Asia means that these guys haven't given up on the NBA dream. They might be willing to come play a conference in the PBA after the D-league season, but they probably won't want a long-term, open-ended commitment like Gilas, which would take them off the NBA map for years and effectively end their careers at the highest level.

I hate to say it, but Giles may have been Gilas's best option.

I completely agree with him that most of the sportswriters who have been covering this whole affair (not just Philippine Star writers) have done a piss-poor job as reporters. I would dare say, though, that the Dwayne Jones signing was as close to happening as reported; I couldn’t imagine Gilas team manager Frankie Lim telling reporters that Jones was close to signing if he weren’t reasonably close to doing it. At the very least, Lim probably thought that he had a really good chance at getting Jones.

As an example, in a report by the Star’s Joey Villar about Jones’s possible signing with Gilas, Lim was quoted about the move. In his follow-up story, after Jones was called up by the Suns, Villar brought up the possibility of acquiring Courtney Sims without quoting Frankie Lim directly.

To be sure, there are still other talented big guys in the D-League. I asked Scott Schroeder of the excellent D-League blog Ridiculous Upside about names that Smart Gilas ought to look into, and he graciously wrote back with a list of the best bigs in the D-League. The list, he said, was the same one he made for an NBA coach looking for prospects:

PF (Pretty top heavy)
Alexander Johnson
Rob Kurz
Lance Allred
Rod Benson
Paul Davis
Brian Butch
Raymond Sykes
Sean Sonderleiter

C
Greg Stiemsma
Kurt Looby
John Bryant
Dwayne Jones
Earl Barron
Marcus Campbell
Michael Fey
Luke Nevill

I had to pick 8 guys. The italicized guys, I said, were those that I thought would have a chance at NBA prospects with a good Summer League or preseason next year - that might be a good place to start.

There's another Asia Challenge going on next week, too - there might be a few prospects there. As far as I can tell, the bigs on the D-League roster that's going will include just Noel Felix and either Alade Aminu (cut today by Miami) or Sean Sonderleiter.

Tough to tell who would be willing to commit to playing in the Phillipines for the duration is the only problem. I like Greg Stiemsma quite a bit and he's played in Korea, so that might make sense.

Like Rafe and Scott, I also think that getting any prospect to commit to playing for Gilas is very difficult. However, if Jones really was as close to signing as I thought he was, then Lim must have made a pretty serious offer to the leading rebounder of the D-League.

Curiously, former import Jamal Sampson was hesitant to sign up with Gilas because the team, then managed by SBP executive director Noli Eala, offered a much lower salary than what teams in the Chinese Basketball Association offered. I’m assuming that Lim is going to these D-League guys with a much better package than is being offered in China, lest he be laughed out of the gym by his prospects.

If this is true, where would Lim get a bigger pile of money to offer to imports? It’s not inconceivable that SBP President and Smart Gilas sponsor Manny Pangilinan would increase the budget for that import’s salary.

Or perhaps, Lim’s takeover of Gilas operations cut a lot of fat. One of the first orders of business for the San Beda coach was to dismantle a Smart Gilas team management committee composed of Butch Antonio, Rico Meneses, Bernie Atienza and Joey Bautista, all personalities identified with Eala.

The four guys were reassigned by Eala to work elsewhere with the SBP. However, as Eala himself confirmed, they are no longer part of the payroll of the Smart Gilas program.