Lutong Macau?

If there’s something that perfectly personifies what’s wrong in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA), it’s got to be Macau.

The Giant Pandas were miserable. They were invited to jack up the competitive level of the league, but they were reduced to a punching bag that can hardly play solid basketball for the whole 48 minutes.

In the Season 50 Governors’ Cup, they played like altar boys battling battle-scarred veterans. Sure, they won two games over Titan Ultra and Terrafirma, but their overall performance was an absolute disaster.

They lost to NLEX by 60 points, 78-138; to TNT Tropang 5G by 55 points, 87-142; and to San Miguel Beer by 52 points, 79-131. As if those massacres were not enough, the Giant Pandas closed their campaign with a 54-point setback to Converge, 162-108, underscoring the lack of fire, competitiveness and willingness to win of these clowns masquerading as a professional basketball team.

PBA commissioner Willie Marcial was quick to distance the league from these miserable Giant Pandas.

“Pare, last na nila yan. Hindi na sila makakaulit,” Marcial said from the other end of the line when I asked him what’s going on with Macau’s embarrassing performance.

Duh!? But why was Macau allowed to see action in the country’s most prestigious professional league in the first place? Didn’t the PBA conduct due diligence and thoroughly research the background of the squad, its financiers, the players, and the reasons why they are so eager to compete in the PBA and gain massive exposure in this bustling basketball market?

When a professional league allows a guest team to surrender 130 to 160 points a night with a losing margin of around 50 to 60 points, it cheapens the product, dilutes its integrity, and reduces what was supposed to be an official game into a mere spectacle that only robs fans of their hard-earned money and time braving the horrible Metro Manila traffic just to witness topnotch basketball action.

To be fair, we can’t completely blame the league.

Bringing in guest teams has been part of the PBA’s glorious past. In fact, it was just a year old when it invited the Ramrod Blocks from Australia and the Emtex Sacronels from Brazil to compete against the Toyota Tamaraws, Crispa Redmanizers, U/Tex Wranglers, Mariwasa Panthers, Tanduay Distillery and Presto Ice Cream in the season-ending Invitational Conference.

Bannered by future Hall of Famer Oscar Schmidt, Emtex eventually advanced to the finals where they were swept by the Tamaraws in a best-of-five series.

The most electrifying memory of a guest team, however, came four years ago when the league rolled out the red carpet for the Bay Area Dragons. At the time, Philippine basketball was just getting back on its feet after the Covid pandemic and needed a major spark to reignite fan interest.

Enter the Dragons. Featuring a pair of explosive imports in Andrew Nicholson and Myles Powell with an Olympic coach in Brian Goorjian of Australia, Bay Area took the league by storm and bravely faced Barangay Ginebra — the league’s most popular team — in a heart-stopping seven-game series that culminated with a record-breaking 54,589 screaming fans inside the cavernous Philippine Arena.

Well, I believe that the dramatic finals series against the mighty Dragons prepared Ginebra stars Justin Brownlee, Scottie Thompson and Japeth Aguilar as well as head coach Tim Cone for a historic title conquest with Gilas Pilipinas in the 19th Asian Games a few months later. Without that pressure-packed encounter, the Filipinos’ first Asian Games title in men’s basketball in more than six decades might not have been possible.

The PBA tried to recreate the magic and the narrative of defending the home turf against foreign invaders when they invited Hong Kong Eastern and Macau. But it’s no longer the same. Instead of being competitive, these foreigners were badly beaten that eventually hurt the credibility and integrity of the country’s top professional league.

By the way, have you ever wondered why Macau always gets beaten by a spread of 50 to 60 points?

Hmm… your guess is as good as mine.