Pfft, basketball!
I do not get why so many Filipinos are so drowned up in NBA fandom. That’s not even a league in the Philippines. And for another thing, why be fans of players who don’t even recognize you? Why memorize all the scores and whatnot. Basketball in general for me, not because I don’t like it, is a perfect and down-heartening proof that we are a nation of citizens with colonial mentality.
I think this Conrado de Quiros opinion is a brilliant insight, partly because I am biased towards it. But in fairness, it is a striking insight into the negative side of Filipinos’ extreme basketball fandom. Our attitude towards these sports reflect a great deal of our national personality, and gives us a glimpse into why we haven’t progressed as a nation.
We’ve always thought that because we’re into basketball, and the NBA in particular, we’re “in”, or occupy the center of the world. It’s not so at all. You compare the size of the crowd and ferocity of its passion in World Cup games and those of the basketball championship, and you know you’re comparing chess and checkers. Arguably, the World Cup, like the Olympics, happens only once every four years. But you compare an ordinary soccer series, like the Asian soccer meets, with the current world basketball championship, and you’re still comparing chess and checkers. Soccer is the game that has the world in thrall, not basketball. That’s what we’re missing, being part of that truly global phenomenon.
…Closer to home, that’s what’s isolating us, sports-wise and ultimately consciousness-wise, from the rest of Asia. I remember again looking for news in a Malaysian paper about the NBA finals some years ago and finding it briefly mentioned in one of the fillers in the sports pages. The main feature in those pages was the UEFA Cup, which was about to start. It was the same thing in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Bangkok, and Bangladesh. Their TV was filled with soccer matches and had scant, if any, basketball at all. Our isolation shows even more markedly in our top pick in the current world basketball championship. Who were we rooting for in the USA-China game? The acronym of Solar says it all: Ultimate Suspense and Action.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being different. In fact it’s great to stand alone and do your thing. But that’s the part that’s even more unfortunate. We’re not doing it because we’re independent or in charge of our lives, we’re doing it because America is doing it, and we’re used to doing what America does. It’s tunnel vision, and it’s doing us harm.
Can anything be more self-destructive than trying to pursue excellence in a game designed for people who are big and tall? Can anything be more self-flagellating than hiring imports to make us look like patsies? Yet we do it, for no other reason than that we don’t know what else to do.
An Australian who has lived here for a long time, and who followed the World Cup faithfully, pointed out to me the incalculable loss in all this. Soccer, he said, is clearly a game Filipinos could excel in in time. At least it offers better opportunities than basketball. We’ll never be able to get far in basketball, unless we practice genetic engineering. But we can always get far in soccer, with grit, industry, and creativity. The last we have no lack of.
Oh look. Our big, American idolized Dream Team just lost to Yugoslavia, who don’t even proclaim basketball as their national sport. And us who do? Where is our team? We don’t even have a team in the FIBA World Basketball Championship. And I bet if we do, we won’t even beat the tall African Angolans.
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