Gilas loses game but reaffirms our love for basketball

Being a Filipino is not easy. If you’re not a part of the 5% who owns 95% of whatever there is to own in this country, life would be struggle from the moment you are born.

It’s hard to get a good education. It’s even harder to get a job. When you do get a job, getting there could be hazardous to your health. Traffic is horrible. The public transportation could kill you. It floods after just a couple of hours of rain. And that’s just in Manila.

Filipinos in the province have it ten times worse but we seldom hear about it.

We’re stuck in a government system consumed by corruption. We live in a country where actors want to be politicians, where religious leaders want to be business moguls. We live in a country where government positions are handed down to family members like articles of clothing.

Sometimes, fate would poke us a little more, like we’re not dealing with enough. Sometimes, fate would send us a DOTC Secretary to leisurely take the MRT on off-peak hours so he could scoff at what we go through everyday. Sometimes, fate would bless us with a mayor who would try to convince us with a straight face that a parking building is worth ten times what it should because it’s ‘green’ and ‘world class.'

There are so many things to complain about, so many things that should make us dislike being Filipinos. Yes we do complain, a lot actually, but we never hate who we are.

This is because we Filipinos like silver linings. We live for those moments when we could say that whatever we went through was worth it because of that one precious moment. We climb that proverbial mountain for days and days just for the shot at seeing the sun rise at the very top.

Watching Gilas Pilipinas compete against Croatia was one of those moments.

Pardon me for trivializing every other issue that is of national importance. If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to tell you why I felt proud to be a Filipino while watching a basketball game.

See, I’ve been told time and again by proponents of other sports that basketball is not for Filipinos. We’re small. Basketball is a big man’s game. We’ll never amount to anything good so we should just save our time, effort, and money for some other sport.

What those people do not understand is that even if we’re small, we’re smart. Sure, we play at a disadvantage every single time we step into the court but that adds to the fun. Seeing Jayson Castro outsmart his much taller defenders to get a shot up is a minor miracle yet it happened so many times. Watching Marc Pingris grab rebounds he had absolutely no business grabbing was nothing short of amazing.

I’ve also been told that naturalizing Andray Blatche was a horrible idea. Those old men from down south exclaimed to the high heavens that making Blatche a Filipino is stupid “kasi hindi rin naman tayo mananalo kahit nandiyan siya.”

When I saw him pound his heart during the fourth quarter, I realized that he was Filipino not just on paper.

But again sometimes, fate would poke us a little more, like we’re not dealing enough, like Croatia’s five inch average height advantage wasn’t big enough. Fate tested us in the second quarter as Blatche injured his knee.

Instead of quitting, we actually fought back. Without the only man who’s not a match-up disadvantage against Croatia, Gilas actually ended the second quarter only down by six.

We lost in overtime. Yes. But it almost doesn’t matter. What we saw, what we witnessed together as a nation felt like a victory. Jeff Chan was a few inches away from winning the game in regulation. We were a weird technical foul away from not even needing Chan’s game winner. We were a whistle away from Castro getting three free throws that could have sent the game into a second overtime.

The Filipinos went back to their hotel knowing that for a few momentes, we made the Croatians doubt themselves,  even with their big size advantage. For a few instances in that game, these giants of men doubted if they could beat us.

Love is often used to describe the Philippines' relationship with basketball and it’s completely true. We love the sport. We’ll do anything for it. We love it so much even if it doesn’t always love us back. We love it even more even if it has hurt us so many times before.

Ganyan tayong Pilipino e. Martir pag nagmahal. Kahit masakit. Kahit walang pag-asa. Kahit halos hindi na tama.

If we competed in diving or football or weight lifting, sports where there are weight division and sports where height is not that big a factor, we could really compete at a much higher level.

But, with apologies to other sports, Filipinos have already selected a sport to love. It is basketball, for now and for the foreseeable future. We might win more in other sports but only basketball can make us celebrate a loss like it was a win.

I’ll never forget the pride I felt after seeing the picture of the Batang Gilas Under-16 team celebrating after losing to powerhouse China in the finals of the FIBA Asia Championship.

I’ll also never forget how Gilas scowled at the referee after losing to Croatia because it made me realize that we were not just there to hang around and not lose badly. We actually realized we could win.

I completely accept the idea that Filipinos are physically not suited for the sport of basketball. It’s true. But like how we Filipinos love, it really doesn’t matter if it’s a good fit or not. Martir e. We made the choice and we’re sticking with it.

After watching Gilas battle Croatia until the final moments of the game, I think finally understood why we Filipinos are small.

See, the basketball gods are fair. With the hoops fire burning deep inside every Filipino basketball fan and player, it would be unfair to countries such as Croatia if we stood as tall as them.

Kung tayo matangkad pa, kawawa naman sila.