Category: basketball

Wrote For Super

Wrote an article titled ‘Assessing this year’s NBA’ for Inquirer’s Super. Inquirer was celebrating it’s 25th anniversary and Pam texted me out of the blue to ask me to write any article as if it was still 1985. So I wrote as if Boston had just won a championship and was on its way to defend it against Houston (Houston won), along with assessments of other people in that rookie class which was pretty loaded, such as Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olaujuwon, John Stockton and some guy named Michael Jord, something.

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Cannot Sleep Post

I unfortunately cannot sleep. In lieu of ZZZs, I am thinking about the ff. (yes, let’s bring on the famous bulletpoints). Start: 10:45PM.

  • Foremost, is the incredible Facebook API, and it’s recent decision to allow 3rd party developers to create apps that can change things like notes, links, videos and the all – important status updates. For what use is a social networking app, or anything on the ‘net if you think about it, if you cannot make broad hints at how available you are to your crush via Facebook? For what else is the internet for??

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A Review of ‘My Game’

This is a review of ‘My Game‘, an hour long documentary by director-producer tandem Carlo Ledesma and Mel Lozano that aims to highlight the roots of some of our basketball heroes, namely Nike talents Ren-Ren Ritualo, Don-Don Hontiveros, Arwind Santos, Jobe Nkemakolam, James Yap and Rico Maierhofer. Premiered last October 18, 2007 at the Powerplant Mall in Makati, it was a well – attended affair with a lot of prominent College and PBA stars in attendance, as well as numerous press and celebrities. Here are some reflections about the documentary. I will be writing about the players themselves in a future post.

First and foremost I’ll go right out and say that it is a terrific piece of work. Carlo Ledesma and Mel Lozano obviously put in a great amount of time and effort in this, but the most important factor that they brought is the one thing that previous and current coverage of basketball in the Philippines consistently fails to deliver – and that is soul.

Read the rest at Ballex!

I’m Going To Interview Kobe

Our good friends at Nike Phils. have for some odd reason found it fit for my lowly self to be in the presence of The Great One.

aug242007_kobe.jpg

I’ve waited for approx 2 weeks to finally make this announcement, preferring to remain on the safe side by making sure first. However a few days ago I received notice that I should ‘spread the word’ (and even then I demurred), but I think it’s sure now, so here’s the lowdown. Kobe Bryant, no. 24 guard for the Los Angeles Lakers and probably the U.S. Basketball Team (they’d be nuts to cut him), and the current most famous basketball player in the world and consequently, the ‘face of the NBA’ is coming to Manila on September 5 to hold a few clinics and of course, promote his new Fall 2007 Kobe II shoes. If I might add, in recent years, I’ve come to regard him as the best basketball player in the NBA as well, and it’s pretty hard to discount that.

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Writing and Basketball and Art

I have told Art that I loved his narrative style on his blog a few days ago when we sat together at an event two weeks ago. For some reason I knew that he’d be a terrific read if he started blogging, and since I found his link on the first PWIT I had been thoroughly hooked. Yes I think I can say now I’m a fan. Wait, let me go further by saying, Art’s blog is, to me, the best, or amongst the top three favorite blogs I follow. Other blogs I like are similar in style, very personal and candid, but his stands out particularly, I think, because of his maturity.

And let me expound on that. See, to me there is no more apt term to describe Philippine blogging than the saying “Youth is wasted on the young.” While the young bring vibrancy to blogging, making it dynamic and exciting, Philippine blogging is 90% run by young people, and sometimes that makes it also very stupid. Of course that won’t sit well if you’re a young person, a Filipino and a blogger reading this, but the point is, it’s hard for one such as me to find anything new these days, or at least anything that’d keep me from wanting to bring on an – unsolicited I’m sure – lecture to these, through no fault of their own, neophytes.

At any rate message sent: Art is a cool guy who writes his memoirs like a careful, methodical painter brings paint to a canvass. Lovingly, simply (and therefore effortlessly) and with a clear heart. I seldom, now I realize, bring praise to people – to a fault, I think, but in this case this is most deserving. I suppose I should have told him that except for the fact I realized I had to first allow him to eat (having said some parts of it directly after coming from the buffet table), and so apt it is I say it here.

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Legends Never Die.

I still cannot really come to believe that the great Dennis Johnson has passed away.

Not that I’ve lost grip on reality, it’s just that the Great DJ is such a larger than life character to me. He is my idol of all idols. He is the reason I’ve always worn jersey #33, (somebody already beat me to DJ’s #3 when I first started playing organized ball, so I settled for the next best thing).

I hated the Celtics, but I loved DJ. His stats: NBA champion (1979, ’84, ’86); NBA Finals MVP (1979); All-NBA First Team (1981); All-NBA Second Team (1980); All-Defensive First Team (1979-83, ’87); All-Defensive Second Team (1984-86); Five-time NBA All-Star 1979-82, ’85).

He wasn’t the tallest, quickest or strongest, but he made – no, worked, disciplined and forced himself to be the best. And that, to me, makes him my Greatest.

DJ will forever be my hero.

Letter from Botak re Basketball Exchange

I was ecstatic when I received this letter two days ago from QC based jersey manufacturer Botak, from time immemorial, the preferred jersey provider of the UAAP, NCAA, PBL, PBA, and just about any decent basketball league in the country today. It reads:

Hello there!

I’m … from Cejogua Sports Corporation, a.k.a BOTAK. If you’re not familiar with the brand, we’ve been providing quality made-to-order jerseys for the PBA, UAAP, NCAA, etc. I came across Basketball Exchange via net search and was wondering if we can do a tie-up or exchange of links?

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Basketball Exchange’s Got Game! Gearing Up For UAAP.

Basketball Exchange.ph is almost three months old now, and goodness how time flies when you’re having fun.

And having fun we are! I’ve found two great writers Chip Lopez and Phillip Kimpo Jr., who by a stroke of sheer luck, answered the call for writers and have appeared as passionate (which is common), and as dutiful (which without a doubt is very uncommon) in sharing of their opinion, news and commentary of all things basketball.

On the site’s more technical innovations, I’ve added polls from Lester Chan and the terrific Feedreader from Chait.net, which is a terrific way to provide fresh content without getting my lazy ass of my seat. If you check the blog, you’ll see feeds from nba.com and espn.com/nba, and it’s hard to imagine how it’d be so hard to keep the site from getting boring without them, which I suppose, is the highest compliment I can give it. I highly recommend it for any site that wants to show updates from news services or other blogs.

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Brothers of the Ball Unite! Write For BBall Exchange!

Brothers of the Ball UniteBasketball’s all about love, and since I’m a world-class lover, I hasten onto this Earth once again The Basketball Exchange Philippines, to which all sorts of orange ball lovin’ will reside.

Seriously, I’ve been dilatory in my duties as administrator and chief poster, so I’m making up for lost time, especially since the NBA Playoffs are way into the midst of their proceedings.

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