WE fear the South Koreans. That’s because in basketball, they’ve always been our kontrapelos (archenemies).
How many times have we bowed to them in global combats?
I can still vividly recall that day when we lost an all-important game to them in the 2002 Asian Games in Busan.
I was right there at the press box covering the PHL-SK semifinal game. (I was the Inquirer’s sports editor then.)
It was a nip-and-tuck affair, the jam-packed stadium rockin’ and rollin’ almost all throughout, as though the Beatles were there belting out nonstop Dizzy Miss Lizzy.
And then, with mere seconds left, we were up by two points. Victory virtually was at hand.
Oh, yeah, just ticks before that, we missed four free throws in succession—two each by Asi Taulava and Olsen Racela.
A bad omen in the offing?
True enough, those flaws proved fatal in the end.
The killer blow came in the form of an awkwardly released acrobatic three by a desperate Korean guard from near the stripe, the buzzer-beater breaking us down with a shocking one-point loss that stole our chance for the gold against China.
In the battle for the bronze, the stigma of the previous day’s setback keyed our defeat to Kazakhstan, the same team that we beat for third in the previous 1998 Asian Games in Bangkok.
And now here come the Koreans again, whom we will face twice next month.
Although we need only to beat them once for us to advance to the 2021 Fiba Asia Cup, uncertainty still lurks.
History seems to be unkind to us almost each time we face the Koreans.
That is why we need a souped-up, beefed-up if you will, Gilas squad to strengthen our chances against South Korea.
And one sure way of achieving that is to liberally spray the Gilas squad with the Philippine Basketball Association’s (PBA) Fil-Ams.
Trouble is, most of them are still vacationing in the US. Expectedly, many of them are scheduled to fly home in February yet as the 46th PBA season does not open until April.
We don’t have the luxury of time as the Fiba Asia Cup third window is set February 18 to 22 at the Angeles University Foundation gym in Pampanga.
We did well in the Fiba second window in November in Bahrain even as we only fielded an almost all-college team. Add the fact the Koreans weren’t there when we swept Indonesia and Thailand (twice).
But with the Koreans coming here next month, they present a king-sized job for us once again. If they prove to be as frightening as the Covid-19 pandemic, no surprise there.
And so, can we expect the PBA’s Fil-Am hotshots to respond to the call of flag and country?
As the cliché goes, your guess is as good as mine.
THAT’S IT If I were Greg Slaughter, the estranged center of Barangay Ginebra, I’d offer my services to Gilas. That way, he’d be proving his sincerity to mend his ways as he navigates his way back to the PBA fold. Gilas does not have a naturalized center like South Korea, which has Ricardo Ratliffe, the former PBA import of Purefoods. Slaughter’s ceiling of 7 feet will surely boost the Gilas cause.