Pacific Rims

by Rafe Bartholomew

  1 A couple years later, Clyde the Glide’s mien appeared in mall advertisements for a Chinese sporting goods company bearing the uninspired name Athletic. I can’t speculate on the marketing campaign’s success in other Asian locales, but the posters of a fleshy, middle-aged Drexler posing in an Athletic tank top were a hit in Manila, with families occasionally stopping to take photographs next to his image.

  2 Tsinelas is the Tagalog word for flip-flops, and the song celebrates a nation of slipper-clad streetball warriors by likening their moves to a roster of legendary professional players. The refrain promises that in their tsinelas, the players will never slip. I found that sure-footedness astounding, since on multiple occasions I had trouble simply walking in flip-flops, especially during the rainy season, when I often found myself hydroplaning along slick sidewalks and once tumbled down a flight of stairs on a wet overpass.

  3 Nearby signs explained that the coffin and burial had been paid for with help from a generous, if opportunistic, local politician.

  4 Araneta patrons called this mascot “Manny Ramos,” after a center on the Coca-Cola team whose elongated head and expressionless face resembled the waffle suit.

  5 PBA seasons are divided into two miniseasons called conferences. The season begins in September with the All-Filipino conference, when teams are not permitted to hire imports like Ellis. That conference usually ends in February, in time for the import conference to run from March through most of July. Both conferences include a sixteen- to twenty-game regular season, plus playoffs. So every year there are two separate PBA champions. If this sounds confusing, imagine what the league must have been like before 2004, when the PBA schedule was split into three conferences and ran eleven months out of the year.

  6 At any given time in the PBA there is a rumor circulating about a local player who could make it in the States. The first and probably only player of Filipino heritage to play in the NBA was half-Filipino Raymond Townsend, who played two full seasons with the Golden State Warriors in the late seventies. In the nineties, Alaska point guard Johnny Abarrientos was supposedly scouted by NBA teams. Virtually any member of Manila’s basketball cognoscenti can cite secondhand knowledge of teams like the Warriors or Los Angeles Clippers, which are based in Filipino-American population hubs, sending out feelers for a player who might be good enough to sit on the bench as a twelfth-man marketing tool. Until it happens, the rumors must be considered wives’ tales.

  7 This might help explain the ease with which the San Antonio Spurs’ Manu Ginobili swatted a bat out of the air in an early season game last year.

  8 The days of fluttering skirts on a basketball court are long gone, as basketball steadily transformed into a man’s game. Women have remained engaged with the sport as devoted fans and respected commentators, but relatively few actually play basketball these days. Colleges still field women’s teams, but volleyball is considered more feminine and garners more media attention. Philippine gender ideals can be rigid and traditional, so when men adopted basketball as their own, the sport became too macho for the delicate maidens who first played it. Many women who are drawn to the game as journalists or fans say they once dreamed of playing basketball, but their grandmothers or aunties or mothers forbade the sport on the grounds that it would turn them into lesbians.

  9 Nowadays, with the Philippine national team barely edging out Cape Verde and Bulgaria for 53rd place in FIBA’s official rankings, simply qualifying for another Olympic Games seems like a distant fantasy, and hoops old-timers rue the near-miss in 1936 as the country’s best shot to earn a medal in the sport that Filipinos love most.

  10 The pissed-off point, still in use in today’s PBA, may be the gravest nonviolent gesture of fan anger in Philippine basketball. When a grim-faced spectator stands up and points at a referee, coach, or player, he or she is beaming shame directly onto the accused. On those occasions when assault by pointing is not enough to calm the crowd’s fury, violence sometimes follows in the form of flying peso coins.

  11 Loose translation: “Because you’re Filipino.” And while we’re at it, “pinoy” is shorthand for “Filipino.”

  12 Basketball even played a role in the lives of adolescent gay Filipinos, who were sent out into the streets to play ball and become men. Many of them reported to Tan that they had been avid players as teenagers, not necessarily because they loved the game, but because it gave them an opportunity to engage in something called “chancing.” Basketball, of course, is a contact sport that leads to a lot of incidental rubbing and brushing. Chancing was the premeditated act of “accidentally” touching another player’s butt or balls during the course of play. I realized I had been the victim of chancing a few times on the commuter train, most memorably by a brazen passenger wearing a yellow shirt with HOT STUFF COMING THROUGH printed on it. Yes, to the average hetero dude this practice must sound disturbing, but Tan’s sources reported that chancing actually played an important role in helping them experiment and come to terms with their sexuality under the safe guise of “unintentional” touching.

  13 Bernardino died of a heart attack in the first month of Roe’s season with Alaska, and Cone insisted that the team attend his wake to honor the former commissioner.

  14 Mang, short for manong, is an honorary title used for elder males.

  15 Aquino always struck me as a man burdened by his height, like he might have preferred to be a chef, but because he was extremely tall and fairly athletic in a country full of hoops addicts, he had no choice but to become a basketball player. I had never seen someone look so glum on a basketball court. Aquino plodded from baseline to baseline, grimacing whenever a smaller player bumped him or swiped at the ball while he operated in the low post. For more than a decade he held one of no more than 150 roster spots in a country of 90 million people; it was a dream job, but Aquino seemed like a captive of his nation’s passion, and he went to work with the same energy and vigor as a 7-Eleven cashier.

  16 Most coaches thought this to be a terrible idea that would make a mockery of the game. They’re probably right, but I would have loved to see the PBA try this because then every player who could sometimes dunk in practice would start trying to jam the ball in games. The inevitable parade of missed dunks would have catapulted the PBA to the top of the list of the world’s funniest leagues.

  17 The most infamous of these hellholes had to be the subterranean Dumlao Gym on Shaw Boulevard, which was housed in the basement of a dilapidated apartment tower. I had never wondered what it might feel like to run wind sprints on a New York subway platform on the hottest day in July, but thanks to Dumlao, I now have a pretty good idea.

  18 Coming from a pro with Penny’s track record, that brief case of mistaken identity was the best compliment I’d received in years. Never mind that I couldn’t hang with Penny and Greer on the court, the fact that I could pass for a player in their league—even if only in a moment of extreme paranoia—made me proud.

  19 This was 2007, after all, before the housing bubble burst and the world economy dipped into recession. Even as far away as Manila, people heard of the fortune that could be made by flipping houses. Cariaso, who’d been living the PBA high life since Alaska drafted him in 1995, thought real estate might be his best bet after retiring and returning to California with his family.

  20 Such a coup attempt was not that far-fetched. Twice in the past decade apostate soldiers seized condominium buildings and hotels not far from Roe’s apartment in Makati City. They held the buildings hostage and called for like-minded members of the armed forces and civilians to fill the streets in reenactments of the People Power revolutions of 1986 and 2001. The masses, however, stayed home, and the plotters eventually surrendered. A third ill-fated putsch might be just the ticket to get me in the PBA, where my goal would be to match the 11 points Cedric Ceballos scored in his one-game PBA career, then tell everyone I was as good as the 1992 NBA slam dunk champ.

  21 Hoops homages appear constantly in Philippine names. During my first month
in Manila, I rode home from a pickup game in a taxi and learned that the driver had named his son Kobe Bryant Salem. My girlfriend, a Filipina-American from Los Angeles, had nephews named Clyde (as in Drexler) and Iverson (as in The Answer). In the PBA, Purefoods all-star forward Kerby Raymundo named one of his sons Kevin Garnett Raymundo. Basketball-inspired names were so common that people often mistakenly assumed that Tim Cone’s son, whose first and middle names are Kevin and Charles, was named after the erstwhile Phoenix Suns duo of Kevin Johnson and Charles Barkley.

  22 Jojo actually had multiple layers of nicknames, such as “Jolas,” a contraction of his already shortened first name and his surname. A powerful leaper with notably plump thighs, PBA yearbooks from the early nineties frequently singled out Jojo for his “sexy legs.”

  23 This moment made such a lasting impression on Jojo that months later, when I coached children at his Manila basketball clinic and all the coaches received a free pair of sneakers, he ordered size nines for me. When I told him they were too small, he frowned and said, “I thought you had tiny feet?”

  24 Salvacion’s pious name was one of the coolest in the PBA, a league filled with great names. My other favorites included Aris Dimaunahan, whose last name loosely translates to “can’t get in front of [me]” in Tagalog; Olsen Racela, whose parents named him after the holiday—All Saints’ Day—on which he was born; and assorted less clever names that just sounded badass, like Nelbert Omolon, Homer Se, and Jimwell Torion.

  25 At this point in Alaska’s season, Mike was still recovering from an ACL tear, but according to Cone, Mike was the Aces’ best player prior to his knee injury.

  26 Baguio’s headband defies description. The best I can do is compare it to a tube top for your head, but even that doesn’t do it justice.

  27 Nancy was able to devote extra energy to taunting Alaska’s opponents during this game because it was played on a school night, and Neil, her kindergarten-age fireball of a son, had stayed home.

  28 Bates and Black had played against each other in the CBA and in Philadelphia’s Baker League, and Black believes that this familiarity earned him Bates’s respect.

  29 I’m not sure if I will get another chance to mention this story, so here goes: Like all basketball devotees, Filipinos deify Michael Jordan. Once, a Manila advertising agency hired me to consult on a basketball-themed television commercial (Alaska put me up for the job). The storyline involved a girl basketball player scoring a game winner, and my job was to coach the child actresses in enough basic basketball skills to make them look somewhat believable on film. The director’s vision was for the lead character to score on a last second crossover and jump shot identical to Jordan’s iconic championship-clinching move against Bryon Russell in the 1998 NBA Finals. When I was showing the girl how to plant her foot and rise for the jump shot (I didn’t teach her how to push the defender, like Jordan did), the director came over to emphasize the point. “Jumujordan!” He had turned “Jordan” into a Tagalog verb. Basketball was so much a part of Philippine culture that Jordan had not only entered the sport’s pantheon, but also the country’s lexicon.

  30 He was also my business-savvy cousin, and he managed to sell our joint collection of “Magic: the Gathering” cards to an online buyer for several hundreds of dollars. The price impressed everyone except my father, who remembered how much I’d saved up to buy an Icy Manipulator the previous year. Now, we pretend none of this ever happened.

  31 At practice more than twenty years later, Banal told me that holding Bates to 28 points in a game earlier that season was the proudest moment of his playing career.

  32 Changing names to boost sales of a new or struggling product is a cherished PBA tradition. The increased television and print media exposure a brand receives through PBA coverage is generally associated with enhanced business. Since it entered the league in 1988, the Purefoods franchise has played as the Tender Juicy Hot Dogs, Coney Island Ice Cream Stars, Corned Beef Cowboys, Chunkee Giants, and Tender Juicy Giants.

  33 To anyone who notices the similarity between the names of Billy Ray Bates and Bobby Ray Parks, the PBA indeed seemed to have a knack for hiring black ballplayers with hillbilly names. Toss in Donnie Ray Koonce, a contemporary of Bates and Black, for good measure.

  34 Somehow, the Coke management beat back the urge to name the team the Soda Poppers or Carbonation Classics, and for that I applaud them.

  35 By the time Operation Delta Force 3: Clear Target was made, the franchise had sunk so low that Chuck Norris was no longer starring in it.

  36 Spotting kamukha (look-alikes) was a tier-two national pastime just behind basketball, cockfighting, and karaoke. That weekend in the hotel, I spent hours sitting in front of a TV with five players, all of us watching and pointing out look-alikes for each other and anyone else we happened to know. Fil-Am guard Alvin Castro’s resemblance to Makati City Mayor Jejomar Binay (whose name is a contraction of Jesus, Joseph, and Mary) was the hit of the night until the albino Filipino comedian Redford White came on screen, and then my white ass was toast. But no matter how realistic—or, as was more often the case, unrealistic—the resemblance between two look-alikes, the response was the same: uproarious laughter.

  37 A Tagalog term meaning “point-point,” which described how people selected meals from the array of pots and steam trays of stewed meats and vegetables at these eateries.

  38 Wealthy former players like Franz Pumaren sometimes took their kids to play in Sunday morning games at barangay courts to toughen them up against poorer opponents. Of course, as a Quezon City councilor, Pumaren also used the games to mingle with constituents.

  39 Tom was only five-foot-seven, but most centers in his era topped out around six-foot-two, so his scaled down height seems about right for a wing player.

  40 Or so goes Tom’s recollection of the event. Tom has been known to apply a grandiose glaze to stories, but the quote sounds an awful lot like many of the John Wayne-worthy quotes attributed to Jaworski over the years. Perhaps the best known is “Kung ayaw ninyong masaktan sa basketball, mag-chess na lang kayo.” If you don’t want to get hurt playing basketball, play chess instead.

  41 A 1955 agreement between the Philippines and British North Borneo requested the migration of Filipino laborers, “preferably Ilocanos,” to Borneo for work in the logging industry and on rubber and coconut plantations.

  42 Boracay, although gorgeous, is a small place; so small that bored resort owners with island fever might develop heated rivalries over who could assemble the most powerful team of balling beach bums.

  43 This was, in retrospect, a pretty arrogant and very American attitude, to which a local would probably reply, “Ganyan ang buhay”—That’s life.

  44 I also heard the rumor that Bong threatened to turn off the court lights, which he had paid to install, if he felt the referees were jobbing his team in the championship game. If true, that may have helped level the playing field.

  45 Perhaps. They were always coy about where our snacks came from. If it was indeed dog, as a few tricycle drivers claimed after the fact, then it tasted fine to me. Rather, it seemed normal after six shots of Ginebra, which is sometimes called gin bulag, meaning it’s so strong you’ll go blind (or eat dog).

  46 Including Tony dela Cruz, who was on loan to the national team but occasionally stopped by Alaska practices, the team had five players who grew up in the States, all in California.

  47 Those born and raised in the Philippines, along with Fil-German Sonny Thoss, who grew up in Papua New Guinea.

  48 At the time, many of the continent’s finest players were Filipino, and a team of PBA stars could have challenged China’s supremacy in regional tournaments. But professionals were barred from international competition back then, so the Philippines had to send college-age amateurs to play against more seasoned opposition from countries that hadn’t yet formed professional leagues. The Philippines actually suffered for being ahead of its time, and it probably cost the country a few regional medals and may
be even a trip to the Olympics. Not so coincidentally, the Philippines last qualified for the Olympic basketball tournament in 1972, three years before the PBA was formed.

  49 To this day Ildefonso has not stopped raising the roof, although age and injuries have conspired to make his dunks, and therefore his celebrations, less common than they were during his MVP years in 2001 and 2002.

  50 This allowed teams to finally break free from the shackles of corporate sponsored names, a contribution that should not be overlooked. Filipinos had endured decades of teams like the pesticide-inspired Shell Azodrin Bugbusters, the Manhattan Shirtmakers, and the N-Rich Coffee Creamers. For once they could cheer for teams without embarrassing names, like the Laguna Lakers and Davao Eagles.

  51 Velasco’s ABS crew is not alone. In 2007 the Wall Street Journal profiled a Metro Manila judge who was removed from the bench after he claimed to consult three mischievous elves known as duwende while he tried to decide cases. Their names were Armand, Angel, and Luis.

  52 Vince Hizon, who bolted the PBA for MBA riches, reportedly still hasn’t received all the money the Iloilo MegaVoltz promised him.

  53 Becoming absorbed in Asian cultures probably came naturally to Compton. His father is a development scholar specializing in the Asia Pacific region, and his mother, a linguist, translates Lao poetry. He was born in Manila in 1974 because his parents were passing through on a research trip.