Basketball is a religion in the Philippines. In Hong Kong, there are over 150,000 basketball-crazy Filipinos who, however unwittingly, are spreading the best (and worst) of Filipino culture through the gospel of hoops.
Eric Goyena, a living legend of sorts in Filipino hoops lore in Hong Kong, looks on impassively as several children loiter around a garbage bin, attempting to throw bits of trash using a variety of basketball moves: a jump shot, a baby hook, a tomahawk dunk. They are missing badly.
“Filipinos will shoot their thing into just about anything with a hole in it,” he tells me matter-of-factly, unmindful of the sexual connotations of his statement and the HK$1,500 fine for littering.
It’s a hot Sunday afternoon on Southorn Playground in Wan Chai, where an OFW (Overseas Filipino Workers) basketball league is in full swing. The bleachers are filled to the rafters, so to speak, with pinoy migrants from all walks of life: Filipino professionals who don’t look like Filipinos, musicians and bar tenders nursing nasty hangovers, domestic helpers enjoying their day off, curious locals, the token gwai lo (caucasian) on the lookout for a Sunday girlfriend.
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Don’t hate the player. Hate the game. Filipino players point to the tallest person on the team – their 6’2” American muse - Photo by Bobby Ormoc |
The atmosphere is loud and festive. Players are in full battle regalia, strutting colorful jerseys with tacky team names that can put authentic NBA merchandise to shame. One of the teams is called the Dakers – dead ringers for the Lakers. Dakers is Filipino gay slang for a man with a big, um, wang.
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| Kobe and Fish? The Dakers will next star in a movie entitled “Honey, I Shrunk the Lakers!” - Bobby Ormoc |
The loudspeaker is blaring with the voice of a diminutive man who looks like a big-haired TV evangelist as he gives a blow-by-blow account of the action unraveling on the court. Beside him sits a petite Filipina in a cheerleader outfit who has vied for “Best Muse” in the tournament. Her presence appears to be giving Mr. Big Hair the Dakers.
Fans squeal excitedly as several players trip over each other during a rebound situation. In the mad scramble, a middle-aged man, with a pot belly the size of a cauldron, picks up the loose ball, dashes to the front court, and attempts an acrobatic layup against three defenders. His shot hits nothing but air.
“Matanda ka na! (You should retire!),” hisses an elderly lady, drawing laughter from the crowd. The team she is rooting for is up by a big margin as the first half winds down to a close.
While fans taunt each other in good humor along the sidelines, mini-banquets are being laid out on top of park benches under the watchful, disapproving eyes of Wan Chai’s gleaming skyscrapers.
“Painit muna tayo, papa (Some congee to warm you up, Mr. Handsome)”, a Filipino lady boy tells me. He exposes a pair of cup Cs as he bends over a big cauldron to ladle piping hot arroz caldo (Filipino chicken congee) into paper cups. I say thanks and take a cup in my hand. A cup of congee, I mean.
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| Jam packed. Filipino basketball leagues in Hong Kong are a dime a dozen. This league, which opened on Lockhard Road in Wan Chai, paraded twenty teams. - Bobby Ormoc |
“Who won?” I ask Eric. He doesn’t hear me, or pretends not to. I learn later that his team of grizzled veterans lost to an unheralded crew of rookies in an earlier game.
At 35 years old, Eric has the looks of a war-weary warrior, his skin parched from endless hours of playing hoops under the searing afternoon sun. Like many Filipino ballers of his generation, he played his first pick-up game in a makeshift basketball ring erected in the middle of a busy Manila street.
He recalls being a gangly, awkward ten-year old attempting to dribble the ball against the neighborhood toughies while – in between acrobatic shots and rib-crunching fouls – barely eluding passing cars and jeepneys (retrofitted Manila jeeps, used for public transportation).
Kids in his neighborhood risked life and limb just to win a game. Losers had to choose between buying a round of ice tubig (melted ice in plastic bags) or crawling between the legs of the winners as a gesture of subjugation. Tied ballgames and disputes are often settled not by overtimes or a rematch – but by fist fights.
If such an environment doesn't develop creativity and mental toughness, I don't know what will. This is Filipino-style streetball in the literal and grittiest sense of the word. Eric fell in love with the game and never looked back.
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| One-on-one? The best Filipino players would rather go one-on-five or one-on-six, if you count their own coach screaming along the sidelines. - Bobby Ormoc |
The year was 1984. Magic Johnson and the LA Lakers were up against Larry Bird and the Boston Celtics in the NBA finals. While cable TV was largely unheard of in Manila, Filipinos were snapping up Betamax recordings of the games at video rental shops scattered all over the city.
Manila was largely Lakers territory, enamored as we were of their brand of “showtime” basketball, despite the fact that they were considered the underdogs against the more fundamentally sound Celtics, who eventually won the series. Back then, even the Philippine Basketball Association, Asia’s first professional league, played out like a Lakers boot camp for players under six feet.
Indeed, Filipinos love rooting for the underdog. And there’s no other sport that plays up the underdog card better than a game which, fairly or unfairly, favors height – something we are not particularly blessed with. Sometimes, it feels as if the Americans brought basketball to our shores at the turn of the 20th century as a sort of substitute religion, much the same way the Spanish brought us Catholicism some 300 years earlier. Like any colonizing religion, basketball emphasized our natural disadvantages and appeased us with the blind faith that we can rise above our, err, shortcomings.
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| Highlight reel. This player has high ambitions – to be the next Air Jordan logo, 5 feet below the rim. - Bobby Ormoc |
At best, basketball has exposed our fundamental weaknesses as a people which, in certain situations, also happen to be our strengths. Any foreigner who gets a chance to watch a Filipino basketball game will immediately get the impression that we play an exciting and passionate, albeit disorganized and individualistic, brand of basketball, which pretty much sums up our social fabric and body politic.
There is, however, a method to the madness. Talented Filipino players, much like talented Filipino musicians, prefer to play it “by ear” rather than be hassled with the X’s and O’s of the game.
For us, the name of the game is not orchestration. It’s improvisation. It’s not classical. It’s Metallica-featuring-Barry-Manilow. Certainly not the beautiful game -- more like the beautiful chaos.
Hence, a typical Filipino basketball game feels like a roller coaster ride showcasing brilliant individual creativity, collective cunning, a never-say-die spirit and, most importantly, a dash of self-deprecating humor – crucial skills to have in a third world country where winners get it all and losers get it, well, in the a$$ from the government.
In basketball, as in boxing, many poor Filipinos see a ticket to redemption. The professional and collegiate leagues are immensely popular and some of the country’s basketball superstars have leveraged their hoops fame to carve out careers in show business and politics.
In a way, basketball also serves as a microcosm of Philippine history, having charted our rise to the top and downward spiral over the last 50 years. As a testament to what we could do if we only put our minds and hearts into something, a team of vertically challenged Filipinos placed fifth in the 1936 Olympics and third in the 1954 FIBA world championships – feats no other Asian country has replicated. It is no coincidence that, at around the same period, the Philippines ranked as Asia’s second largest economy after Japan.
But while other Asian countries improved their game and bred taller players, our international ranking in basketball deteriorated due to incessant bickering among our sports leaders – thanks to too much liberal democracy, another American legacy. We all know what has become of our sorry economy: a giant exporter, not of goods, but of people.
“Last two minutes!” announces Mr. Big Hair to usher in Filipinos' favorite part of the ballgame, or favorite part of anything, for that matter. Southorn Playground is throbbing with anticipation as the game reaches fever pitch. A throng of local ah pahs (elderly Chinese men) have blended in with the pinoys, looking bewildered and on the brink of being infected by the rabid fanaticism not commonly seen in prim-and-proper Hong Kong.
Eric is up on his feet. What was a lopsided game has turned into a come-from-behind thriller bordering on cardiac arrest, 109-107, time down to 16 seconds. It’s crunch time.
Mr. Big Hair is spewing gibberish, barely able to keep up with the pace of the action. Point guard number 23 has the ball. He hurtles through a throng of defenders like a headless chicken to the delight of the crowd and, for the first time, Mr. Cup C’s eyes are riveted on the game rather than my frame. He is squealing like a school girl. And I am looking at him like a school boy. I shudder at the thought and force my attention back to the game.
Number 23 still has the ball (and the balls) as he dribbles the time away. He doesn’t look like he intends to pass it anytime soon. Last eight seconds, man. WTF are you thinking?
Dribble, dribble, dribble. Everything is now happening in slow motion. Five seconds. Four. Three. The idiot finally decides to take it strong to the hoop against all five opponents. He believes he can do it. The crowd thinks so, too. I don’t. Then, out of nowhere, he kicks it out to an open team mate who unleashes a long bomb that swishes the net to beat the buzzer, 110-109.
The crowd erupts. Mr. Pot Belly is roll-on-the-floor ecstatic at center court. The underdog has done it again.
When the smoke clears, everyone is all smiles, even Eric the Skeptic. In jest, he accuses the referees of fixing the game. The referees shoot back, saying he should try growing his baby Afro to add a few inches to his 5’5” frame. The ensuing laughter is only as hearty as Mr. Cup C’s congee.
We are, after all, a happy people – sometimes to a fault. As Mr. Cup C hands out his cups of happiness to players from the losing team, we hear a familiar voice behind us.
It is our friend Jules, asking us whether we would like to play an indoor basketball game in Shek Tong Tsui. I remind them that there is a bucket of ice-cold San Miguel Beer and a plate of crispy pata (Filipino deep fried pork knuckles) waiting for us at Traffic Bar on Lockhart Road. It shouldn’t be a tough choice – basketball or beer? For Filipinos, one usually follows the other.
As we mull over our predicament, we are suddenly disturbed by the most divine of apparitions: Ms. Best Muse, with her come-hither eyes, raven-black hair and alabaster legs, walks right by us, leaving a trail of Dakers doing the double take.
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| Beauty and Brawn. Filipinos love their B’s – basketball, boxing, billiards, beer bellies and beauty pageants. - Bobby Ormoc |
If there is one thing that can overcome the indecision of three hot-blooded Filipino men with beer bellies and big hair, it’s an epiphany with great legs. Basketball or beer? This is Wan Chai, where one night of beer (goggles) and beauty can make a hard man humble. Jules and I turn to Eric the Wise for counsel.
“Basketball,” Eric says in response to our silent question. Jules and I look at each other blankly.
Basketball? Crazy!
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Ryan Asis Maniago works for an executive recruitment company in Hong Kong. He loves basketball even though basketball doesn’t love him back. He is also a firm believer that it’s only a matter of time before Philippine basketball (or the Philippines, for that matter) gets its act together and starts kicking ass on the international stage. This blog post was published on Jumpshot.sg magazine.
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