Rains and floods on a PBA Tuesday

For the past few seasons, the Philippine Basketball Association has held games on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with an occasional Saturday playdate usually held at an away-from-Metro Manila venue.

For the ongoing Governors’ Cup, the PBA decided to hold a couple of Tuesday doubleheaders to be able to fit in its tight elimination schedule. The first, held on 03 September 2013 at the Araneta Coliseum, popularly known as the Big Dome, went without a hitch, as Petron defeated Barako and Meralco edged Alaska. The second Tuesday date was a little more eventful, though most of the interesting stories took place outside the Big Dome, prior to the start of the second game featuring Alaska and San Mig Coffee.

Tasked with doing play-by-play commentary for the Alaska-San Mig tiff, I left the Ortigas Center area in Pasig at 430 p.m. to be able to make my call time of 5:00 p.m. It usually takes me about fifteen to twenty minutes. But, while caught in worse-than-usual traffic at and around Robinsons Galleria and St Pedro Poveda College, an already bad situation became the worst within minutes as the sky turned dark gray and the rain started to fall.

As many of you know, the rain last night was no ordinary downpour. It was wrath of God-type, extremely heavy, coming from what seemed like every direction, and visibility on the road was reduced to almost nil. By the time I hit EDSA, about thirty minutes later, I knew it would be a slow crawl towards Cubao, but never imagined I, and hundreds of others, would stay parked in one spot between Ortigas Avenue and the Santolan overpass for another hour and a half.

There were flashes of lightning, there were rumbles of thunder, the rain just kept falling and falling, and from the Ortigas flyover until the gates of Corinthian Gardens, water was gathering already, about a third of a tire-high. I know how the area at the foot of and under the Santolan overpass can flood quickly and presumed that was the reason all cars heading that direction had just completely stopped. I kept checking on the progress of the first game on tap, Barako vs Rain or Shine, and found that the first quarter had ended, then halftime came, then the third quarter was underway, and I was still in the same spot.

On Twitter, Alaska forward Nic Belasco mentioned the terrible traffic, but was thankful that the rain was cooling his overheating engine. Ace Dondon Hontiveros mentioned he was also stuck in traffic heading to the Big Dome. Joanne of the Sports 5 Production crew behind the PBA coverage monitored my progress, or lack thereof, to go to Plan B in case I could not make it to the venue on time.

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The rain had eased up already for about an hour, yet apparently the waters up ahead had not subsided enough for cars to pass. A little past 7:00 p.m., the cars suddenly started to move. I had already asked Joanne to request my colleague, Atty Rado Dimalibot, who was doing play-by-play for the first game, to render some overtime. My partner who would serve as game analyst, Dominic Uy, already made it to the Big Dome via another traffic-less and floodless route. Good for him. But the cars kept on moving, more quickly as the minutes went by, and, just like that, in less than ten minutes, I was parked at the venue, rushing to get in, don my suit and knot my tie, with barely ten minutes before the scheduled jumpball.

While parked on EDSA, I had seen a picture that Hontiveros posted, showing the floodwater, captioned with a statement that he had to get out of his car and walk along EDSA, through the flood, to get to Araneta. Dominic informed me that both imports, Marqus Blakely of San Mig and Wendell McKines of Alaska, as well as some other players, were not yet at the venue.

As Dominic and I prepared to go on the air, we found out that both imports had (barely) made it, and observed as the teams warmed up that almost everyone was there, except for Alaska guard Jvee Casio. He was still caught in traffic somewhere and only arrived sometime early in the second quarter, seeing his first action with only about four and a half minutes left in the half.

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Before the halftime break, we interviewed San Mig forward Joe Devance, who had returned from a one-game suspension. He told us the interesting story of how he made it to the Big Dome earlier, as he got out of the car he was riding and flagged down a guy on a motorcycle and asked for a ride to the Coliseum. The motorcycle couldn’t take him all the way because of the flood, so he had to get down, walk in the water, and when past it, flag down another motorcycle-rider to take him the rest of the way, with a promise of free tickets to the game.

Perhaps the rain, flood, and/or traffic had an ill effect on the Alaska Aces, as they were not the usual pinpoint-passing, almost perfectly-executing team they usually are. San Mig, despite some of their players having struggled to get to the game, took full advantage of the sluggish Alaska offense and porous defense, seizing the lead in the middle of the second quarter and holding on until the end, winning going away, 95-82.

After the game, more stories started pouring in, about McKines having taken the MRT to get to Araneta, San Mig’s Mark Barroca, who played a great game, also jumping on the MRT to make it on time, and San Mig big man Yancy de Ocampo arriving at the Big Dome with his pants folded up, having waded through the flood. The hulking McKines said that people on the train were looking at him since he was “the only black person in there.”

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Despite the horrible ordeal caused by what was actually just a little rain in a fast-flooding area, everyone who had to be at the Araneta Coliseum for the second game of the Tuesday twinbill eventually made it there. There was, in fact, a pretty good crowd watching live, most of whom made it there before the rains poured during the first game. There were many entertaining moments, lots of near-confrontations, technical fouls, an ejection (Coach Luigi Trillo), some bad calls, and almost a triple-double from Blakely (22 points, 28 rebounds, 8 assists), whom we chose as the Best Player of the Game. As for the flooding that occurred, something really has to be done about that.

You can follow Charlie on Twitter @CharlieC

Editor's note: The blogger's views do not represent Yahoo! Southeast Asia's position on the topic or issue being discussed in this post.