Weird, funny basketball crossover
Wright said the players are representing Pinoy Pride wherever they go, while Slaughter called out the PBA for its actions, which he described as ‘total BS and crab mentality at its highest.’
Now it's getting weird, albeit funny. Where in the world can you see athletes rising up in arms over their mother associations? Only in the Philippines perhaps?
This case of our young basketball players airing their sentiments against the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas and the Philippine Basketball Association is just the latest in a number of such incidents involving Filipino athletes disenchanted with the way their national associations are treating them.
What is sad is that the athletes involved are of international caliber who could have given the country honors had they been taken care of well.
Take the case of chess prodigy Wesley So who was barely a teen when he made a splash on the world stage. He had a run-in with the Philippine Chess Federation when he captured a gold medal in the University Games, but was denied any incentive by the PCF, which claimed it was not a sanctioned event by the International Olympic Committee.
Disgusted at the incident, So decided to take a scholarship offer at an American university and eventually decided to change federation and play for the United States where he is now a citizen. He has since emerged among the Top 10 players in the world and reached as high as No. 2 in the ELO ratings for grandmasters.
A little consideration could have kept So playing for the country and reaping honors for the motherland.
Only recently, pole vaulter EJ Obiena was in hot water, too, with the Philippine Amateur Track and Field Association, which put him under probe for allegedly falsifying his liquidations pertaining to payments made to his foreign coach Vitaly Petrov.
He was subsequently denied funding for his training pending the probe and was asked to return some P4.8 million in unliquidated allowances. The embattled Olympic pole vaulter found it weird that the issue of late payments to his coach was somehow leaked to the media after he tried to settle it internally.
A mediation facilitated by the Philippine Sports Commission prevented what could have been a long drawn-out war of attrition, which could have forced Obiena to retire if the issue remained unsolved.