“The Big Smooth” Sam Perkins in Manila: 100 days to (basketball) heaven
Yes, basketball freaks: by the time you read this it’ll be less than one hundred days before the first ever National Basketball Association (NBA) pre-season game takes place in the Philippines where Eastern Conference finalist the Indiana Pacers take on Western Conference playoff squad the Houston Rockets at the MOA Arena on October 10th. In line with this momentous occasion, the NBA through NBA Asia and its Senior Director and Country Manager Carlo Singson has slated a phalanx of events to usher in the endeavour. The latest sortie involved bringing to Manila three-time NBA finalist Sam Perkins to add more fire to the proverbial flame.
Perkins is here for a media blitz that ends on July 4, but took the time to meet the press recently at the MOA Arena lobby, joined by Singson, MOA Arena Business Unit Head Arnel Gonzales and SM Tickets and MOA Arena Marketing and Sponsorship Head Nicole Mariz Deato. The media came in full force on the invitation of NBA Philippines PR chief Tessa Jazmines of Larc and Asset and after a brief luncheon, the hulking 6’9” former North Carolina Tar Heel made his way to the podium—visibly fighting an incoming case of jet lag.
Singson explained that the NBA Global Games will showcase eight different teams travelling to four different locations in around the world which also includes stops in Brazil, Spain and England other than the Philippines.
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“The NBA recognizes that this region is growing rapidly,” Singson said. “Today marks the one hundred day countdown to the realization of many Filipinos' dream to have an actual NBA exhibition game held here. We brought Sam (Perkins) in because he used to play for the Pacers and he can bring a unique insight into one of the teams that will be playing here in October.
“Our next ventures will be to bring in (Houston Rockets All-Star) James Harden and even the Indiana Pacemates (Pacers’ cheerdancers) on July 26-28 so that the Filipino fans can get ready to experience this. We’re hoping to make it very successful.”
However, success may have already been attained on the very first day tickets went on for sale at the MOA Arena box office as a staggering PhP 19 Million worth of tickets were sold as soon as tickets became available last June 16th. That's a one-day sales record.
“Tickets are already 71 percent sold,” Deato announced. “The movement of tickets have been good for both the high-priced tickets and the not so high. The P550 tickets flew off the shelves in 15 minutes.”
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While it may already seem like a foregone conclusion that the MOA Arena will be filled to the rafters—oh, the rafters are the first that filled—for this historic undertaking, the man of the hour was “Big Smooth” who indulged a variety of questions flung at him from the open forum and to the subsequent sit-down sessions he obliged after the initial press conference which also showed the soon-to-be-released television commercial of the NBA Global Games and the unveiling of the “100 Days Countdown Clock”—which will be displayed within the building’s facades. Perkins was soft-spoken yet very eloquent in his answers as only “The Big Smooth” could deliver.
But how did “The Big Smooth” get his moniker?
“There was a time when I was still with the (Los Angeles) Lakers that we were at practice and the whistle blew for all of us to get on the court,” the burly forwad/center recalled. “Everybody was hustling to get on the court, but me, I took my time, dressed up and timed it so I’d be on the court before the whistle blew like I was walking in the park. And all the time I was walking, Byron Scott was saying, ‘well look at Sam walking all smooth like he doesn’t have a care in the world.’
“I guess also some of the things that I do on the court (during games) for being quiet and so emotionless led to that as well that by the time I got to Seattle (Supersonics) it stuck.”
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Perkins grew up watching a lot of action from the American Basketball Assocation (ABA) while growing up as a kid in Brooklyn, New York.
“I loved watching guys like Julius Erving and George Gervin make it happen in the ABA,” Perkins recalls. “I also watched a lot of the Knickerbockers—as they were called then—guys like Earl ‘The Pearl’ (Monroe), Willis Reed coz he was a lefty like me, and also other bigs like Bobby Dandridge, Elvin Hayes and Wes Unseld. These were the guys I sort of patterned my game after and I just loved how they flowed so well.”
When he began his NBA career with the Mavs, Perkins wasn’t known as a perimeter threat although he averaged about fifteen points and eight rebounds a game for Dallas in his six seasons there. It was in Los Angeles where then Head Coach Mike Dunleavy asked him to develop his outside shot.
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“Vlade (Divac) was being groomed as the new center,” Perkins looks back. “So Coach Dunleavy had me work on my outside shot. We’d play a game of H-O-R-S-E and later on I got used to it.
“It became more useful when I moved to Seattle coz Coach (George) Carl used a lot of playground variations on his plays coz of the players we had (Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp, Detlef Shrempf, Nate McMillan, Michael Cage, etc.) and we were up against guys like Hakeem (Olajuwon) and Shaq (O’Neal) so my presence allowed us to stretch the defense and it got us far. It also got me far in my career. I’m so blessed having been able to play seventeen, eighteen years in the league.”
Among the many achievements of Perkins was winning an NCAA crown alongside future hall-of-famers such as Michael Jordan and James Worthy, rejoining Jordan with another future Springfield inductee Patrick Ewing to bag the Gold Medal on home turf in the men’s basketball competitions of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and being among the first five picks overall (4th by the Dallas Mavericks, behind #1 Olajuwon of Houston and #3 Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls, followed by #5 Charles Barkley of the Philadelphia 76ers) in the 1984 NBA Draft—the first by then incoming Commissioner David Stern and hailed by many as one of the best draft classes in history. His success also translated into the NBA Playoffs as three of the four franchises he played for advanced all the way to the NBA Finals: the Lakers in the 1990-1991 season, the Sonics in 1995-96 and the Pacers in 1999-2000.
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However, Perkins never got to capture that elusive “championship ring” and—from my recollection—joins another member of the Hall-Of-Fame in Karl Malone (1997, 1998, 2004) as the only players of their generation to appear in three NBA Finals but not win the title. This still stings Perkins to this day.
“It felt great going (to the Finals),” he said. “But coming in second three times is something I will always remember with mixed feelings. It’s kind of a good and bad thing; you go (to the Finals) and don’t win so it’s kind of disappointing but I cherish every moment I had and I cherish every game that I was blessed to play in. I thought I’d only be playing in the league for six years but I ended up helping three teams make it to the Finals. I wish I could have won at least one of them but that’s just the way it is, I guess.”
Perkins still helps out with the pacers organization as the Vice President for Player Relations and hopes that the team puts on a good show for the fans in the Philippines.
“I’ve heard stories of how big basketball is over here,” he professes. “It don’t get any bigger than this. I hope we give the fans their money’s worth.”
“First things first, we wanna have a successful staging here for the first ever NBA Pre-Season game,” Singson stated. “Who knows, maybe down the line we could have a regular season game here. That’s the road that’s being taken by the league now in its efforts to globalize the brand. It might just happen, but first let’s do October.”
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As the NBA increases its global campaign to usher in the 2013-2014 season, it’s great to know that this tiny archipelago—a sports anomaly in the region due to its passion for basketball instead of soccer—is slowly being recognized as a key hub for the NBA in Southeast Asia. And as more and more NBA stars of the past and present descend upon this nation, we also slowly become a vital member of an ever-growing family that the NBA is establishing globally. Sam Perkins himself prophesizes this.
“It all has to start somewhere,” he told me. “I don’t see any reason why this won’t progress steadily in the near future.”
I can’t wait for October. This will be BIG.
Follow Noel Zarate on Twitter (@NoelZarate) and email sportztackle@yahoo.com
