IN PANAY NEWS TODAY...... WORM’S EYE VIEW: Choke Reyes October 3, 2014 BY ROMMEL YNION THE much-ballyhooed Gilas Pilipinas basketball team has lived up to its monicker. Why hasn’t it succeeded in its quest to demonstrate its “gilas” as we say it in vernacular to define any attempt to show off one’s “image” of competence? After getting itself too close to victory in each of its lost battles against its FIBA tormentors, they convinced most of its fans that they could make mincemeat out of its much lesser rivals in the Asian Games. The logic – or illogic as it turned out to be – is that if they could pose a threat to each of those Goliaths that beat them in FIBA, they could beat the Asians by just going the proverbial extra mile on both sides of the court, burying those crucial baskets at crunch time, and defending their turf when the marauding invaders get close to the hoop – oftentimes to whittle down a commanding lead expected to catapult them to victory. But alas, to the horror of its fans, the Gilas Pilpinas only showed that competence is not a matter of form but of substance. By that, we mean character. There is something in the team’s character that makes them crack under pressure, allowing their leads to melt into nothing at the closing minutes of the game. Yes, it’s true that the last two minutes of the game often belongs to the coach, not to the team anymore. Choke Reyes, as he is now fondly called by his critics, is a coach who lacks the killer’s instinct. He has never been a great finisher, based on his chequered coaching career in both the professional and amateur leagues in the country. Compared to the other bemedalled coaches like Norman Black and Tim Cone, he lacks that inexplicable ingredient that galvanizes a team into an electrifying push towards victory. My unsolicited advice to Mr. Choke is to study all Manny Pacquiao fights in which a lesson or two on killer’s instinct stand egregiously for all to learn from. In his second duel with Erik “El Terible” Morales, the Pacman dazzled the boxing world not only with his chutzpah but with his ring savvy. And when the “game” was on the line, he always managed to uncork a flurry of lightning punches that overwhelmed the Mexican out of his wits. In the end, the speed and power of the Filipino superstar were too much for him, abbreviating the seventh round with a technical knockout which solidified his stature as then the emerging lord of the ring. The Gilas squad can definitely learn from that Pacquiao fight against Morales. As soon as the Pacman gained the upper-hand, he never fizzled out. In fact, he elevated the fight a few notches higher, turning it not only into a test of stamina but also into a clash of will. Whoever had the stronger willpower deserved victory in the end. And that was the legacy of that bout: the lesson that he who is stronger-willed wins the fight. And that was what Gilas lacks: the will to win. They seem to be afflicted with that Filipino mentality that once success comes, it’s time to sit back and relax, expecting victory to just come again and again without exerting any serious effort and bringing everything to bear on one’s attempt to emerge triumphant in any game that they play. This is, no doubt, where the culprit lies. Nothing else. What Gilas lacks is not talent but attitude. They have an abundance of talent already. No need for that anymore. Yes, they do have attitude but it’s the wrong attitude. What they lack is the positive mental attitude to win at all costs, to get things done. What differentiates success from failure is oftentimes that mental lapse to turn that minus sign between one’s ears into a plus sign. That is all. And, of course, Reyes cannot blame his team’s fans for christening him Choke because that is what he has been doing all along. He has done nothing but choke the efforts of his team to win by doing only he knows what. Yes, it is common among failures in life to have that indefinable something that has established their failure pattern. It’s up to Choke Reyes to try to pin down what it is. Until he does that, there is no hope for him or his team to win. Manny Pacquiao is really one Filipino athlete from whom Choke can learn the art of success. Or, shall we call it “science” of success? After the Pacman first won the world flyweight championship, he got too cocky as well. And he paid for it dearly after losing it to a Thai fighter and after that, he learned that success was an elusive thing and that it was like writing in snow. Yes, he knew that overconfidence had no place in any effort to succeed because success only belonged to those who relentlessly sought it until the championship belt is safely tucked around a boxer’s waist. What makes Gilas take that lead in the early going only to watch it go up in smoke, so to speak? That is the question that the Filipino squad must ponder upon. For the answer to that will surely lead to corrective measures in molding the team’s character into a more competent one in the future. All is not lost yet. But any failure to pin down the causes of past losses will only mean permanent defeat or even death to this war-shocked team and its dream to make a dent on the world of basketball.
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 22:04:49 +0000