No winners in SBP, PBA spat over FIBA 2019 qualifying

Even in a midst of a period that should have Filipino basketball fans feeling optimism and good vibes with the hosting of the FIBA Olympic Qualifiers just over a month away, the news of the Samahang Basketbol de Pilipinas, stated by chairman Manny Pangilinan, going with an all-cadet team to try and qualify for the 2019 FIBA World Cup has left a lot of Filipino basketball fans confused and largely pondering what is next. Such a return to an all-cadet program, similar to the old Northern Cement Philippine team during the 80s and the original Smart Gilas 1.0 program from 2009 to 2011, will leave off PBA players from representing the Philippines.

In this situation, let me be frank, no one wins.

Beginning with the Filipino basketball fans, the chance to see PBA stars represent the country and don the national colors for Gilas (which can be said has shown to be a proven record for success based on the silver medals obtained by the Philippines in the 2013 and 2015 FIBA Asia Championships, as well as Gilas’ creditable showing in the 2014 FIBA World Cup) is all but off the table. Is that worth the fact that Gilas games will finally be played on home soil more often than a one-off tournament?

Not in my opinion.

The PBA too, while it may seem that they may enjoy the fact that they won’t have to loan players for the national team and thus avoid what has proven to be a sore sticking point for various clubs, will lose.

Case in point, this upcoming PBA Draft will prove to be extremely shallow. Collegiate stars such as Kiefer Ravena, Mac Belo, Kevin Ferrer, Jio Jalalon and others, who all made up the core of the Gilas Cadet squads who won the SEABA championship just last week and will likely make up the core of the upcoming Gilas Cadet squads, will not ply their trade in the PBA. The PBA, despite having many stars themselves playing, will lose out on a batch of new rising talents, and that will almost certainly not make the PBA and it’s mother teams happy.

Now, it must be said that Pangilinan is not in the wrong for threatening to go with this measure, and that Pangilinan and the SBP deserves the right to cover themselves in the case of not having a creditable pool of players to pick from if all goes down under. The issues with regards of trying to get PBA mother teams to be willing to let players play for the national team will not be avoided. Injuries due to the incredibly long PBA season will now be avoided. There will be no more 10-to-11 month season (across 3 conferences of tournaments) that will cause key talents to be hurt and miss out on playing for the national team, such was the case with Rain or Shine star and Finals MVP Paul Lee.

However, even he does not not win in this case, and while the SBP will have their own free reign in players, you can’t come up with a coherent rationale in believing that going with an all-cadet lineup will prove to be a better option going up against fellow Asian and Pacific elite competition than going up tried-and-tested and proven professionals.

Other leagues in Asia, all of which don’t go 10 to 11 months like the PBA, will find it easier to adjust their schedules, and an all-amateur and all-collegiate national team may find it difficult to try and grind out wins against teams like Australia and New Zealand (you probably forgot those two giants would be joining Asia’s FIBA region for qualifying), not to mention fellow Asian giants such as China and Iran.

Ideally, a little negotiation and compromise between the necessary basketball stakeholders in the Philippines, namely the PBA and the SBP, would suffice and lead to letting all the fear that has accumulated (to the point of having me write this article) over the past few days whimper into the thin air. As stated above, no side truly wins long-term, and it is unfortunate that such measures are looking likely.

Perhaps the SBP could draw up a list of players that would comprise the core of the future national teams, now where those players could play would be another issue, but at the same time the PBA itself draws a list of players that would be given the green light by mother teams to play for the national team even in bad scheduling windows.

Perhaps the PBA could also commit to adjusting their schedule, finally getting rid of the much-panned 3-conference format that has dragged on the season for far too long and has led to players increasingly getting fatigued and getting hurt, and the PBA will miss out on the rumored mass pull-out of collegiate stars in the upcoming PBA Draft, ensuring a new batch of fresh faces will don PBA team jerseys.

The fact remains, the best players in the Philippines all play in the PBA. While guys like Ravena, Belo and Ferrer might one day be one of the best players in the league or in the Philippines, they simply aren’t yet. Hedging all your bets on a team full of talented and promising, yet unproven players with no support from the best players in the country to try and qualify for the World Cup seems like a foolish proposition, which makes the looming necessity of such a measure even more unfortunate.

Going back to 2011, despite a fine semi-final finish for the majority-amateur Smart Gilas team coached by Raijko Toroman, the team still failed in their goal for reaching the London Olympics. You can also make the legitimate point that the reason Gilas made it all the way to reaching the semi-finals were due to the presence of four PBA players in the team in Jimmy Alapag, Ranidel de Ocampo, Kelly Williams and Asi Taulava. Despite the four pros having came to Gilas only in the last minute (quite literally) and not having prepared for Toroman’s system, the four still logged the most minutes for Gilas and played key roles.

At the same time, the SBP and Gilas now features more leverage than before to try and force the PBA to compromise through any means deemed fit. The recent successes of Gilas, through the two straight silver medal finishes in Asian competition in 2013 and 2015, as well as the riveting run during the FIBA World Cup in 2014, along with Jones Cup successes with the title in 2012 and a strong runner-up finish in 2014, has captivated the Filipino basketball fanbase. Even if certain Juan De La Cruz is not an avid watcher of the PBA these days, Juan surely watched Gilas and rooted for the national team on.

Such advantages was not present during the days of the original Smart Gilas program from 2009 to 2011, where the national team (bannered by PBA stars) limped to disappointing finishes in the 2007 and 2009 FIBA Asia tournaments. If such a situation like what is occurring now were to have occurred then, the PBA would have laughed the SBP and Gilas out of the room.

The PBA also benefitted from the successes of the Gilas program. Attendance increased after Gilas’ silver medal finish in the 2013 FIBA Asia Championship, yet fell again after the issues that blossomed when it came to getting players from the San Miguel Corporation bloc of PBA teams in the 2015 FIBA Asia Championship. Whether or not the reasons for the rise and fall in attendance were directly related to those reasons and events can’t be proven, but the coincidence can’t be ignored.

Fact is that the PBA is not the perfect entity that it could simply ignore the SBP in any case. While the product on the court is strong, and the current generation of players are talented and are all skilled, the league has had issues off the court en masse over the past few years. Playoff and finals attendance hasn’t been strong, as we saw with the attendance over the six games between Alaska and Rain or Shine in the latest finals.

In any case, both sides enjoy certain advantages with regards to this issue that the other side desperately needs. And while both sides may not realize it, both sides probably still do need each other. For the situation to unfold as has been unfolding over the past few days were to occur, no one in Philippine basketball wins.

Not the fans, not Gilas and the SBP, and no, not even the PBA.

For a basketball country that has rarely seen unity among  stakeholders, a development that has capped the potential for the Philippines as a basketball country for so long, such unity would do nothing but good for all parties.

And no one would appreciate that more than the Filipino fanbase.