Rafe Bartholomew: Imagining Team Pilipinas from an alternate universe Over the weekend, I took a long flight from Ninoy Aquino International Airport back home to New York City. I flew Korean Air, with a layover in Seoul, South Korea, where I peacocked through the terminal in a Pilipinas Basketball T-shirt. That’s because throughout the entire, 27-hour door-to-door trip, I couldn’t stop thinking how lucky I was to return to Manila during the two weeks when Gilas Pilipinas won the silver medal in the FIBA Asia Championship and qualified for the 2014 Basketball World Cup. Once the wheels were up on my first flight and Manila Bay faded out of view, I closed my eyes replayed Gilas highlights — Coach Chot Reyes’s staredown with Hamed Haddadi, Jeff Chan’s opening 3-point salvo against South Korea, Japeth Aguilar’s “and-the-foul” dunk against Qatar, June Mar Fajardo’s unintentional comedy explosion for three fouls in three minutes against Kazakhstan, all things Jayson Castro. All the images, down to the Gilas players bending over as FIBA officials hung silver medals around their necks, could have been something out of a dream. Of course, they were reality, and that made them far sweeter. The success of Gilas also opened the door for me to imagine other versions of the team with a clear conscience during my next flight, the 14-hour jaunt from Seoul to New York. That’s because we know what the “right” version of the national team was — it was the group that qualified for a FIBA World Cup for the first time since 1978 and had the nation crying tears of joy. So instead, I could entertain myself by imagining strange, themed versions of the Philippine team. Hey, it was either that or watch Sylvester Stallone’s “Bullet to the Head” seven consecutive times. So what is a themed national team? A group of PBA players who all play a certain way or represent a specific style of basketball.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 09:26:55 +0000
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