When I was growing up, especially during the growth spurt years, family friends, my dad’s clients, my mom’s officemates, my titos and titas, well… almost everyone would ask me if I played basketball or if I was a varsity team member. Much to their disappointment, I would say no, and go onto a really nerdy elaboration… explaining why, and telling them that I actually played the clarinet and that I was into computers…
Everyone would mutter the same thing in amazement, and say… “Sayang! Ang tangkad mo panaman!” Thinking back, I wonder how things could have been if I were a bit more athletically-inclined… yes, I do have the height, and... I had flashes of game… no… I mean… like really more like split nano-seconds of game… oh… ok… maybe just the height.
Being part of the honors class during my high school’s intramural games was really quite a thrill… and at times… quite an embarrassment… because we were only a handful of guys who could play basketball… and that’s not high-school caliber basketball at that, its really just a few studious geeks trying their best at not looking ridiculous while the other team pounded them senseless … this usually meant that given the 7 or 8 people who could play ball, we would have to be playing straight quarters, with little or no time-off and no substitutions, (this plus the fact that there were other sports being played in between or at the same time, so subs would be coming from volleyball, I’d be leaving a half for chess, etc.) especially for me, because I had to pull my weight as the only center for the team. In fact, there was a year, wherein we had to resort to asking the other team if it was ok to have our girl classmates play (the irony is that, our girl classmates were actually better basketball players than most of us… Let’s go, Pabsy and Carla I!)
Looking back, I enjoyed the anxious, nervous anticipation of the annual games, because you never know, it might be the year that we might actually qualify for a playoff, but then we had to psyche ourselves with the fact that, yes we are going to get creamed… so we might as well make it swift and painless.
The games we played were what you would classify “garbage games” but not in the sense that they were trash, but… you know how it is when sportscasters call out a rookie being given playing time by their coach, usually during the end minutes of the game, with the outcome assured… a win or a loss?... with the coach doing it really just to see how the rookie actually plays and works in a game situation? Well, it was something like that, we played those games, with as much “lets not make fools of ourselves” candor along with the “lets show them that we aren’t as lampa as we look!” attitude…
And I loved every moment of those games, even when we were losing… I remember a good friend: Joseph, whom no one would really consider a “take it strong to the hoop” fellow, considering his tall wiry and… almost fragile frame… my heart leapt in a “kita niyo na moment” when I saw how everyone reacted to his quick first step/sidestep drive to the hoop. Everyone was like… huh?! What the?! He sidestepped, slashed and dribbled and drove to the hoop just as efficiently he would write C… (yes he is a programmer/software developer) And I was grinning and laughing because during our lunch time breaks, he would tell me that he really is a slasher… I mean who would have thought?!
I remember my “moment”, when I got the ball outside the three-point arc, of course being the center, I’m just supposed to pass it off to an open man and rotate to the shaded lane… but then, no one seemed to want to get the ball… so I just shot a three, or did my best impression of shooting a three… and it went in… so there you go… You have a programmer driving to the hoop, and a center taking three-pointers…
Of course, we had our go-to guys… the ones who had street cred… Roman, a real thick, aggressive guy… who was someone you wouldn’t want to be next to as he tries to score… with his flailing elbows and all. He was the catalyst for I think a year or two, but then he got himself out of the section… so we were left to fend for ourselves…
Then there’s Pipo, who was in the class for a year, (the same year I got kicked out… <that’s another blog entry>) and he was a real athlete… a volleyball player, he could leap, score, drive, pass… whatever… and considering that I was out of the section then, I was kind of envious because maybe it was that year that the class finally got to the finals…
I guess the main key about basketball is that, since everyone gets to touch the ball, everyone gets the chance to be the “star.” That is why Pinoys are the biggest fans, despite the overwhelming evidence that our race/mix isn’t exactly tailor-made for the game. (Which is why… we end up with Fil-ams, Fil-foreigners and Really tall probinsyanos <with all due respect… no offence meant> playing in our leagues)
In a country of 80+ million and counting, in the midst of the fecundity of our masses, we look for ways to stand out, to become sikat, to become stars… (ergo… all the contests, pageants, talent searches, etc.) and basketball, is one of the myriad of ways of finding “our moment/s”… because in the basketball court, everyone, could potentially be a star, for a blink of an eye, be it the tsambalerong spotter point guard, the pabandang center, or the ala-hoy na bangko.
And its evident, if you go to any serious basketball court, you’ll see people trying really hard… at either showing what game they got, or trying to not look like they don’t have any, and it takes serious work and a lot of contradictions… we all want to do well and score the winning shot, but we don’t want to be called a “bakaw” or a ball-hog by everyone else in the team. Basketball is about mastering the fundamentals so that you can be a generalist, because you have to play both sides of the ball… Especially in Pinoy-style larong kalye, wherein since everyone grows up to a similar height… the variance in positions is very little… with the point guard at 5’5” and the center at 5’8”. So almost everyone evolves playing almost the same way.
Recognizing my height advantage at an early age, and wanting to put some specialization into what I was doing… (since I’m a fancy-pants nerd), I watched and observed how the centers play… and I tried to emulate them, but here’s the kicker, I didn’t grow to their size… so at 6’2” (which is really just a good height for a guard) I’m either a really short and reasonably mobile center, or a oafishly slow point-guard.
That’s the reason why I gave up on my basketball dreams, because aside from my above-average height, I had asthma, plus the fact that I wasn’t exactly going to beat anyone in wind sprints, I really just didn’t fit. I was an in-betweener.
And then I learned about American football, which is on the other hand, a game of specializations, guys do just one specific thing… but they do it very well; offensively: either they throw (the quarterback), they catch (the wide-receivers and ends), they run and carry the ball (the tail/full backs), if you didn’t do any of those pretty well, you’d get pigeonholed into either the defense (wherein you just have to tackle and hit the ball carrier (or if you could, intercept the pass) or you get thrown into the trenches… (with all the sumo wrestlers) and play the offensive or defensive lines.
The beauty of American football is the sheer specialization involved. Literally, the team has to be one well-oiled, cohesive machine. If the lineman doesn’t protect the quarterback well, the pretty-boy team leader won’t be able to throw the ball, to top things off, if the receiver doesn’t catch a well thrown ball, then its all for naught! If the linemen can’t open holes in the defense for the running back to run through, then they will end up with nothing but 3rd and long. (all the knowledge on something I really don’t get to apply much here in the
Conversely, if the defensive pass-rush doesn’t pressure the QB, its going to make life difficult for the Defensive backs in protecting against the pass. Never mind if you didn’t understand a single thing I mentioned, because the point is that, everyone depends on everyone else in the team.
In basketball, its not new if Kobe takes the rebound, takes the ball down court, beats 3 or 4 defenders and slams the ball for a score, trotting back up court with a “That’s all me” look in his face. In football, despite all the showboating by star players, its simply unheard-off... you simply cant pull it off alone.
But then again, I may be overanalyzing something simple. But are basketball and football really that simple? Or are they microcosms of how our societies work? Is Philippine society really a bunch of “individuals” working under the guise of a team/group to plot his/her own glorious moment/score? Just like in Basketball?
Or maybe I’m just talking like this because I don’t have game/bano lang talaga ako?
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