By Ronnie Nathanielsz (From Manila Standard Today)
THE past couple of days, the newspaper we enjoy writing for—Manila Standard Today—has bannered stories about the Philippine Basketball Association Board of Governors’ decision to change its rules and to impose a fine of several million pesos on any team that walks out of a game as Talk N Text did fairly recently and Ginebra San Miguel did many years ago.
According to reporter Rey Joble, another one of those unidentified board members who often hide behind the skirt of anonymity, revealed that the PBA agreed to raise the P500,000 penalty for a walkout slapped on Ginebra by the eminent lawyer and then PBA Commissioner Rudy Salud to P5 million. But it seems even on that issue, the facts were confused as Joble claims he received an email from the PBA media relations office that the fine would now be P10 million.
Whether it be P5 million or P10 million is not the point. The inordinate interest and hurry in announcing the huge new fines raises questions as to why the board—or at least some members in the board—found it necessary to act with such dispatch on the walkout issue which, we must remind all concerned, was triggered by a patently bad call.
The series’ free throw statistics at that point were so patently lopsided, it clearly showed that Ginebra was being favored by the referees and Talk N Text was, to put it bluntly, being screwed. For the record, Ginebra has all long been my favorite team, but we have always subscribed to the ideal of winning fair and square and not by any foul means.
If you watched the finals between Purefoods and Alaska, the same incompetents, who made the dubious call that triggered the Talk N Text walkout were also responsible for another game-deciding call in the dying seconds of Game 2, which enabled Purefoods—one of the three San Miguel Corporation teams that entered the semifinals—to go ahead 2-0 instead of giving Alaska a chance to tie the series at 1-1.
Respected former national coach and multi-titled mentor Norman Black, a fine television analyst I might add, and widely read sports columnist and TV commentator Quinito Henson no less, came out stating that the call was a bad call and should never have been made. Ranged against them, we had Commissioner Sonny Barrios dutifully defending the referee’s call just as he did in the case of the dubious call in the Talk N Text-Ginebra game that triggered a walkout by the Tropang Texters.
The PBA board members, as well as Barrios, missed the whole point. They should have looked at the cause of the walkout and not concentrated on the walkout per se. Every single PBA team has complained at one time or another about the officiating, but what have they done about it? Absolutely nothing. It’s gone from bad to worse amidst suspicions that some hanky-panky is going on within. Instead of zeroing in on the cause of the trouble—the referees’ questionable if not suspicious calls—the governors zeroed in on those who reacted to the referees’ calls.
We were taken aback when Alaska team owner Fred Uytengsu whose team was aggrieved by that call in Game 2, came out condemning the walkout and even suggesting that the fine should be higher and that the fans were the ones that were deprived of watching the game. Is Uytengsu suggesting that PBA teams should close their eyes and do nothing about the dubious calls that appear to favor certain chosen teams that bring in the crowds and help the coffers jingle? Was it because the team that benefited was Ginebra and since Alaska beat Ginebra, everything was fine and dandy.
Is the PBA willing to set aside the fundamental issue of integrity in favor of profit without honor and to allow the shenanigans to continue?
Clearly, someone had to make a strong statement to jolt those, who sit idly by and don’t give a damn if officiating stinks as long as they continue to push the effort to make the PBA a money-making venture. We may not agree with walkouts as a means of protest, but when it becomes obvious that the quality of wholeness that is essential in any sports endeavor is sacrificed for monetary gain on several fronts, then the walkout that Talk N Text resorted to demonstrated that at least there was one team’s leadership that had the courage to take a stand and pay the price if indeed they had to. To us, as it certainly should be to members of the PBA board, the words of the eminent lawyer and the leagues’s most respected and successful commissioner, alongside the revered late Leo Prieto—Rudy Salud—come to mind. Commissioner Rudy often stressed that integrity is non-negotiable.
Come to think of it, how can the PBA board dare talk of integrity when players are bought and sold, rights acquired and peddled for millions, as though players are commodities in a marketplace and to add insult to injury, get absolutely nothing from these questionable deals.
THE past couple of days, the newspaper we enjoy writing for—Manila Standard Today—has bannered stories about the Philippine Basketball Association Board of Governors’ decision to change its rules and to impose a fine of several million pesos on any team that walks out of a game as Talk N Text did fairly recently and Ginebra San Miguel did many years ago.
According to reporter Rey Joble, another one of those unidentified board members who often hide behind the skirt of anonymity, revealed that the PBA agreed to raise the P500,000 penalty for a walkout slapped on Ginebra by the eminent lawyer and then PBA Commissioner Rudy Salud to P5 million. But it seems even on that issue, the facts were confused as Joble claims he received an email from the PBA media relations office that the fine would now be P10 million.
Whether it be P5 million or P10 million is not the point. The inordinate interest and hurry in announcing the huge new fines raises questions as to why the board—or at least some members in the board—found it necessary to act with such dispatch on the walkout issue which, we must remind all concerned, was triggered by a patently bad call.
The series’ free throw statistics at that point were so patently lopsided, it clearly showed that Ginebra was being favored by the referees and Talk N Text was, to put it bluntly, being screwed. For the record, Ginebra has all long been my favorite team, but we have always subscribed to the ideal of winning fair and square and not by any foul means.
If you watched the finals between Purefoods and Alaska, the same incompetents, who made the dubious call that triggered the Talk N Text walkout were also responsible for another game-deciding call in the dying seconds of Game 2, which enabled Purefoods—one of the three San Miguel Corporation teams that entered the semifinals—to go ahead 2-0 instead of giving Alaska a chance to tie the series at 1-1.
Respected former national coach and multi-titled mentor Norman Black, a fine television analyst I might add, and widely read sports columnist and TV commentator Quinito Henson no less, came out stating that the call was a bad call and should never have been made. Ranged against them, we had Commissioner Sonny Barrios dutifully defending the referee’s call just as he did in the case of the dubious call in the Talk N Text-Ginebra game that triggered a walkout by the Tropang Texters.
The PBA board members, as well as Barrios, missed the whole point. They should have looked at the cause of the walkout and not concentrated on the walkout per se. Every single PBA team has complained at one time or another about the officiating, but what have they done about it? Absolutely nothing. It’s gone from bad to worse amidst suspicions that some hanky-panky is going on within. Instead of zeroing in on the cause of the trouble—the referees’ questionable if not suspicious calls—the governors zeroed in on those who reacted to the referees’ calls.
We were taken aback when Alaska team owner Fred Uytengsu whose team was aggrieved by that call in Game 2, came out condemning the walkout and even suggesting that the fine should be higher and that the fans were the ones that were deprived of watching the game. Is Uytengsu suggesting that PBA teams should close their eyes and do nothing about the dubious calls that appear to favor certain chosen teams that bring in the crowds and help the coffers jingle? Was it because the team that benefited was Ginebra and since Alaska beat Ginebra, everything was fine and dandy.
Is the PBA willing to set aside the fundamental issue of integrity in favor of profit without honor and to allow the shenanigans to continue?
Clearly, someone had to make a strong statement to jolt those, who sit idly by and don’t give a damn if officiating stinks as long as they continue to push the effort to make the PBA a money-making venture. We may not agree with walkouts as a means of protest, but when it becomes obvious that the quality of wholeness that is essential in any sports endeavor is sacrificed for monetary gain on several fronts, then the walkout that Talk N Text resorted to demonstrated that at least there was one team’s leadership that had the courage to take a stand and pay the price if indeed they had to. To us, as it certainly should be to members of the PBA board, the words of the eminent lawyer and the leagues’s most respected and successful commissioner, alongside the revered late Leo Prieto—Rudy Salud—come to mind. Commissioner Rudy often stressed that integrity is non-negotiable.
Come to think of it, how can the PBA board dare talk of integrity when players are bought and sold, rights acquired and peddled for millions, as though players are commodities in a marketplace and to add insult to injury, get absolutely nothing from these questionable deals.
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