After the game, no one spoke inside the locker room. The white board that Cone hurled earlier had been reassembled with duct tape and now wobbled precariously in the corner. Cone broke the apocalyptic silence: “I’m not so sure what to say. We can come out and quit on the season. I’m not going to say I have a lot of hope right now.”
The following afternoon in practice the mood hadn’t lifted. Cone stalked into the players’ lounge like a pallbearer and announced that he wasn’t ready to talk to the team. Instead, he’d meet privately with Roe and a few others; everyone else could shoot around. Willie arrived an hour late and spoke to no one. For once, he wasn’t feuding with Roe, but with Cone. Willie had disappeared in game five, scoring six points on six shots, and Cone criticized him in the postgame press conference. “We didn’t get a whole lot from Willie,” Cone told reporters. “He has to be careful he doesn’t get satisfied with that MVP award. Being MVP means showing up every night.” It was precisely the kind of direct confrontation Roe had demanded, and Willie, just as Cone predicted, withdrew. He came to practice late so the whole team would know he was upset. He put on his practice uniform but didn’t bother to lace up his sneakers. A half hour later he was back in street clothes, lying prone on the bleachers with his arm covering his face. First Poch, then Jeff, sat down next to Willie to coax him out of his forlorn mood. Even Roe reached out to him. He slapped the despondent guard on the foot and smiled, but Willie’s sole response was a solemn nod.
Cone was no longer upset about the game five altercation, but he continued to feign anger toward Roe and the team to create tension, which he hoped would stir the players from the complacent muck they’d been mired in all series. “If you’re feeling bad, frankly, guys, I could give a shit,” he told the team before game six. “This isn’t about rubbing each other on the shoulder and making us feel good, because if we lose, we’re not gonna like each other anyway. All I care about is are you ready to come out and win this game.”
The Aces didn’t look ready. Cardona scored on his patented spinning hook the first play, and a couple minutes into the game Talk ‘N Text already led 10-2. Alaska couldn’t get a stop. Cone tried three defenders on Cardona, including Roe, whom the Talk ‘N Text guard lit up with a three-pointer and another one-hander. By the end of the first quarter the Phone Pals had put 34 points on the board and led Alaska by twelve. Cardona was on pace to score 60 points.
John Ferriols hit a jumper from the high post to open the second quarter. On defense, Willie stripped Cardona and rocketed down court to score an and-one layup. Alaska pulled within a point after Willie canned two free throws, Roe scored a putback, and Rey Hugnatan scored on a drive. The Phone Pals had yet to score. Roe shoveled a pass to John beneath the basket, who banked a layup to give the Aces their first lead. This was it—the moment. I no longer felt like I was watching a live basketball game, but the inspirational montage in a movie when the team comes together. The Aces kept scoring—off fast breaks, in the post, off the triangle offense. Cardona tried to stop Alaska’s run with a three-pointer. Air ball. Somewhere, I heard “Eye of the Tiger,” but I wasn’t sure if it was playing in my mind or a nearby karaoke stall. Talk ‘N Text didn’t put up a point for the first seven and a half minutes of the quarter. When Sullinger finally made a free throw, Alaska had opened the period on a 22-point scoring spree. The Aces carried the momentum into halftime, with Willie whirling and sidestepping past Cardona to score an and-one on the quarter’s final play. Alaska never looked back in game six. Willie emerged from his shell to score a career-high 37 points. Maybe Roe was right, and Cone should have been direct in his criticism of Willie all along. Or perhaps Cone played his hand perfectly, using his nuclear option motivational ploy when the team needed it most.
Due to a scheduling conflict, the final game would not be played at the Araneta Coliseum,102 the PBA’s usual venue, but at a shabbier facility in southern Metro Manila called the Cuneta Astrodome. The Astrodome was the PBA’s home for most of the nineties, but since the Araneta’s 1999 renovation, the league scheduled only a handful of games each season at Cuneta. A crumbling, turquoise eyesore overlooking Manila Bay, the Astrodome underscored the state of decay on Roxas Boulevard, an eight-lane coastal highway that was once home to glamorous, Copacabana-style nightclubs but more recently had developed a reputation for neon-clad sex fortresses103 and its proximity to Smokey Mountain, the infamous, now-closed landfill that was home to tens of thousands of slum-dwelling scavengers.
The walk along Libertad Street from the commuter train station to the Astrodome was a minigallery of Metro Manila street life. The steady march of jeepneys and motorcycle-sidecar taxis choked the air with exhaust, while adolescent boys in tattered shorts and T-shirts darted through traffic to sell single cigarettes (“One stick!”) and individually wrapped mints. Every variety of two-bit entrepreneur—keycutters, watch repairmen, notaries public—seemed represented along Libertad’s sidewalks. Outside the curiously named “New Harlem Restaurant,” home of Chinese cuisine, voracious construction workers crowded around food stands to buy fried fish balls and sticks of barbecued entrails. Larger flocks assembled in Libertad’s open-air canteens around the glow of television sets tuned to the pregame coverage of Alaska and Talk ‘N Text’s game seven. Side streets inevitably led to basketball hoops and games of three-on-three. Outside the Astrodome a homeless family slept facedown on sheets of cardboard in a shady alcove that was once the entrance to a now-mothballed telegraph office. I slipped into the arena through a back entrance and headed for Alaska’s locker room.
Walking through the Cuneta hallways, I passed bathrooms marked HE and SHE. The reminder NO SPITTING ON THE FLOOR was stenciled on a massive cement buttress. The walls were painted in Easter egg pastels, as if the building’s architects noticed how imposing the concrete structure felt and decided to lighten the mood with a Pepto-Bismol-inspired veneer. I noticed fewer upper-class families in the Astrodome crowd; instead, the narrow seats were packed to the rafters with spindly young men in their twenties and thirties, the kind of guys who would probably be playing in the street on any other clear July evening. Washcloths wiped the grit from a day’s work off their faces and they inched forward in their seats as the arena’s clock wound down to gametime. Whereas the Araneta Coliseum had Starbucks, Wendy’s, and Taco Bell franchises, Cuneta’s only concessions were a couple hot dog stands and hawkers roaming the crowd with wire baskets stuffed with bags of chips and soda cans.
In the locker room, Cone chose to avoid the standard game seven clichés. He told the team to play Alaska basketball—man-to-man defense and the triangle offense, with an emphasis on rebounding. “Don’t be afraid to make mistakes,” were his final words of advice. “Go out and win the game. Take chances.” Once the players left to begin their warm-ups, Cone turned to Banal. “There’s not a whole lot you can control,” Cone told his top lieutenant. “It’s either going to happen or it’s not.”
Alaska appeared tired in the first half. They didn’t play poorly, but Talk ‘N Text beat them to a lot of rebounds, and the extra possessions helped the Phone Pals grab an early lead. I got the feeling that game six had been the Aces’ last hurrah. Then, toward the end of the half, Roe was fouled on a drive, and he and Cardona jawed at each other while Roe headed to the free throw line. The teams separated the players, but Roe walked to the Talk ‘N Text bench and started taunting the entire team, including Pangilinan, who was seated behind them. The referees called a technical foul on Roe, and when Cardona made the penalty free throw he started nodding maniacally while the entire Alaska crowd booed him. Talk ‘N Text held an eight-point halftime lead, but Roe’s confrontation reenergized the Aces.
At halftime Roe was once again on the warpath, but this time he wasn’t fuming at his own team but at Cardona and the Phone Pals. “You know they’re front runners,” Roe said, stomping his feet in the center of the locker room. “This is our half. We fittin’ to fuck these little kids. They wanna talk shit and get hype? We ’bout to fuck them
like little kids.” I’m pretty sure Roe’s Tagalog-speaking teammates had trouble following this diatribe, since even I was a little bewildered by his choice of words. It didn’t matter, because the message was clear. Roe was going to channel all the anger he poured into his game five tirade into winning the championship. He wouldn’t let the Aces lose.
Throughout the second half, Roe posted up on the left side of the key and scored on a steady stream of lefty jump hooks. Talk ‘N Text seemed afraid to double team him and open the passing lanes, so Roe just kept lofting shots over Sullinger and Washington. In the last minute, Willie crossed over at the top of the key, barreled to the rim and flipped in a finger roll to give Alaska a two-point lead. On the next play, Willie stripped Cardona, walked the ball upcourt and found Roe, ready one last time on the block. His final hook gave Alaska a 98-94 lead with forty-four seconds to play. The players on the Alaska bench rose to their feet, then grabbed each other’s arms and shook. It’s really happening! The Aces needed a stop to put some distance between themselves and the Phone Pals. Talk ‘N Text gave the ball to Sullinger, and the import wheeled through the lane, where he bounced off the chests of Roe and John Ferriols. His runner fell way short of the rim, and Alaska secured the rebound.
Down four with thirty seconds to play, Talk ‘N Text started fouling to get the ball back. Alaska’s expectant bench players were already jumping up and down and Jojo Lastimosa’s daughters were weeping tears of joy three seats away from me. The Phone Pals fouled Willie, who coolly stepped to the free throw line. After missing his first shot, Willie glared at the rim and licked his lips. The look of intensity was unnatural on him, like a caricature of determination. His second shot bounced in and out, and Talk ‘N Text rushed downcourt and scored on a putback. Next they fouled Rey Hugnatan with fifteen seconds left, and he too flubbed both free throws. The choke was on. The Phone Pals sensed an opening, and I was afraid the basketball gods would punish Alaska for leaving the game in the hands of fate. Jojo’s daughters’ tears skipped from joy to dread. After a time out, Cardona received the ball and drove on the right side of the court. The defense collapsed around him and he passed to Belano in the corner. Belano’s go-ahead three-pointer rattled around the rim, sunk halfway down and popped out. Rey rebounded the ball and was fouled again with a second left and the Aces leading, 98-96. Rey managed to hit one out of two free throws, but Alaska’s five misses in the final minute meant a buzzer-beating three could tie the game. Coming out of a time out, Sullinger caught the ball thirty feet away from the basket and elevated for a shot. It was on target and the game appeared destined for overtime. But Sullinger’s prayer struck the back of the rim and ricocheted high into the air and away from the basket.
Alaska clinched the title. It was the team’s first since 2003, so the wait for a championship hadn’t been unbearably long in Chicago Cubs terms, but given how low the franchise sunk after 2003, their turnaround was remarkable. The Astrodome public address system blared Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration” while the Aces stormed the court and mobbed Roe and Willie. Most of the crowd followed suit, and before long an impromptu hugging orgy took over the hardwood. There was no champagne, so the giddy players sprayed one another with cans of San Miguel Beer. Uytengsu was in the middle of it, high-fiving and embracing fans and complete strangers. Willie, carrying his two young children, couldn’t hug anyone, so he let fans rub his bald pate. Roe stood arm in arm with a portly fan who rolled up his sleeve to expose a shoulder tattooed with the Aces’ logo. The festive air was punctured somewhat by pickpockets, who fleeced Uytengsu and several of the players’ wives of cell phones, wallets, and digital cameras. It didn’t matter, as the victory party continued, moving away from Cuneta’s urban griminess to the plush confines of the Hard Rock Café, where the players and Uytengsu sang “We Are the Champions” on stage and drank until dawn.
A few days later Jeff hosted a going-away party for Roe. The entire team was there, reliving game seven, laughing at the hard-boiled face Willie made prior to missing his second free throw, and planning for their upcoming trip to California and—where else?—Disneyland. Before dinner, the players, coaches, and their families formed a circle in the living room around Joel Banal, who said grace: “Dear Lord, we thank you for the gift of family, the gift of friends, the gift of basketball. Amen.” When I have a family, this will be our Thanksgiving Day grace.
Deep into the night, the players sat on Jeff’s deck, arguing over control of the stereo—Nic wanted New Edition; Poch preferred Fergie—and watching the distant city lights. The Filipino players brought cases of San Miguel Pale Pilsen and Light, while Roe chipped in a couple bottles of Hennessy and Grand Marnier. It was a cross-cultural love fest that would have seemed impossible a week earlier, capped by Roe and Willie posing together for a picture. They stood side by side, holding a roasted pig head in front of them, each player grinning with a crispy ear between his teeth.
On my way home from Jeff’s house, I stopped for a nightcap at Countryside Restaurant, an institution in the Quezon City booze and barbecue scene. The place wasn’t much, just a heap of meat and a grill next to some aluminum picnic tables and a counter set up along the street. There was no music, just the buzz of cars speeding past from time to time. My bottle of Red Horse beer and two skewers of pork intestine arrived, and I nodded to the chef, who grinned and yelled, “Alaska, man!” In recent weeks, more and more people had been recognizing me for my affiliation with the Aces. It was the Mang Tom effect: casual PBA fans watched games and noticed the people sitting behind the benches. Because I was a particularly novel hanger-on—tall, foreign, always scrawling in a spiral notebook—spectators were curious about me. Was I an injured player? A fourth-tier assistant coach? Poch Juinio liked to propagate the fiction that I was Tim Cone’s son, which led to countless awkward encounters where self-styled experts asked me to relay triangle offense advice to my dad. One day, Leo, the longtime employee responsible for washing the players’ uniforms, called me “Raffy Boy, the lucky charm of Alaska.” The label stuck, and as the team went deeper and deeper into the playoffs, I embraced the role.
When Cone agreed to let me spend the season with the Aces, I never seriously considered the possibility that they’d win the championship. After their nineties dynasty dissolved, Alaska lost its team identity and spent years as one of the PBA’s middling, lackluster franchises. I just wanted to see the league from the inside. But once the Aces reached the semifinals and finals, I found myself rubbing my hands together, crossing my fingers, making the sign of the cross, doing anything I could to give the team a karmic boost. I’m sure my superstitions accomplished nothing, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t help feeling like part of the team. I wasn’t, but it was the closest I’ll ever get to being with a championship franchise. Or a last place squad, for that matter. Now that the Aces had reached the promised land, I dreaded leaving them. Life without Cone’s coaching schemes, Roe’s weary determination, Jeff’s dignified leadership, or Banal’s basketball mysticism would lack meaning; and without Poch’s silent-but-deadlies, Mang Tom’s molested backside, and the constant fear of being flashed by Willie, it definitely wouldn’t be as much fun.
My mind drifted to the hundreds of Filipinos I’d met who had somehow been drawn into basketball’s orbit: The teenagers practicing Willie Miller jukes and spins in their flip-flops. The beauty queens crowned on their barangay basketball courts. Elmer Gonzales, the Cebuano midget who buffed his playing sneakers like they were his most prized possession. Freddie Webb, the PBA legend and former senator who devoted his government career to peppering the archipelago with roofed, cement-floor courts, because when he was young, “Every day I’d come home from school, look up at the sky and ask God, ‘Please don’t let it rain because I want to play basketball.’” The writer Krip Yuson, who recited his basketball verse, “Larry Bird Smells the Flowers” and “No More Jordan,” when I met him at an outdoor coffee shop. And Recah Trinidad, a grizzled boxing scribe with a taste for goat meat and brandy,
who took me to his “clubhouse”—a shed skirting a swamp behind his home—and said: “How could you think of Filipino life without basketball? It’s not only a pastime; it’s a passion. There is no other game.” They came from disparate nooks of Philippine society; I came from thousands of miles away. Yet I understood their passion as well and as deeply as anything I’ve ever known, because the love for basketball that so many Filipinos felt was no different from my own; it was a love that anyone who ever scored a reverse layup in traffic, or stayed in front of a great ballhandler’s crossover, or threaded the needle on a pass could understand.
Somewhere in the night—behind Countryside, heading down the hill into the Marikina Valley, I heard the faint, steady thump of a ball being dribbled. I closed my eyes, sipped the beer, and chewed a chunk of intestine. The food and the footwear were different here, but the soul of the game was the same.
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