‘Basketball players have to prove they’re worth the adulation we grant them, otherwise their careers are short ones; politicians? It’s family property, remember? So voters are only carrying out their ministerial duties.’
LIKE most Filipino basketball fans, I’ve been following the events surrounding the careers of the Ravena brothers, collegiate basketball stars of the Ateneo de Manila University and sons of a former UAAP standout of the UE Red Warriors, Ferdinand “Bong” Ravena.
What has made the younger Ravenas the subject of column inches in sports pages is the fact that both have chosen to pursue their basketball careers in Japan: Ferdinand III or “Thirdy,” the second son, opting to join a Japanese league straight out of college and thus bypassing the PBA, while eldest child Kiefer Isaac, currently under contract with the NLEX Road Warriors, has indicated his desire to follow his younger brother into the same league albeit on a rival team.
Both have upset the PBA in some ways, with Thirdy being told he needs to submit his name to a PBA draft or be banned for life, while Kiefer is being prevented from leaving due to a live contract. I agree with the PBA Board’s decision on Kiefer and would have voted the same way had I still been on the Board (I served as the Coca-Cola representative to the PBA Board from 2002-2003 and from 2007-2012), but I would give Kiefer the option of buying out his contract, something I am not sure is an option available to any PBA player at this point. However, on Thirdy, I do not believe it correct for the PBA to demand that all collegiate players need to make themselves subject to the PBA draft even as, in this case, the young man prefers to pursue his career elsewhere. The PBA remains the aspirational league of almost every young Filipino basketeer and should not be too insecure about its stature; should foreign leagues in fact begin to pose a challenge to the PBA then the solution is not to “build a wall” around the country so that talented ballers could not leave; it is to make sure the PBA regains and retains its stature that perhaps was at its peak from its inception into the 1990s when competitiveness and team rivalries were not burdened by the perceptions brought about by cross ownerships of teams.
The Ravena brothers clearly draw their talents from their own father; the elder Ravena played a significant supporting role to Allan Caidic and Samboy Lim at San Miguel after being drafted in 1992, when he was chosen Rookie of the Year. From San Miguel, he moved on to be a key player on the Purefoods Corned Beef team that won the 1997 All Filipino, winning the Most Improved Player award and ending up on the Mythical Second Team.
Today, he is a senior assistant coach at TNT Tropang Giga, which is owned by the same conglomerate that owns the NLEX team on which his son plays.
I write about the Ravenas because basketball is one fact of Filipino life where sons have followed fathers, although most never rose to the same prominence as their elders. The Loyzagas are an example; like the Ravenas, two sons followed their father, Olympian Carlos “Caloy” Loyzaga (aka “The Big Difference”) into the hard court, but never quite came close to becoming as dominant as the father was. Jaworski is another popular name with Robert “The Big J” Jaworksi arguably the PBA’s GOAT; son Dudut followed his dad onto the hard court and into politics but on both counts never equaled the elder. Mumar is a third name that someone of my age remembers, again with the father Lauro (aka “The Fox”), a teammate of the elder Loyzaga, clearly far more dominant in the annals of basketball in comparison to his son, Lawrence “Larry” Mumar. Of late, we hear the name Paras, though it is too early to say whether any of the two sons of the legendary UP Maroon and Shell stalwart Venancio J. Paras Jr. (aka Benjie) will leave a bigger mark bigger than his.
I am sure the real basketball aficionados can add more names to this list, such as the Pumarens.
What is clear is that in this one “given” of Filipino life, bloodlines can only bring you so far.
It could, not surprisingly, open doors (some of the children of prominent basketball players may have never gotten a break had it not been for their last names!), but the doors would not stay open for long unless the entrant showed any talent to justify the chance he was given. And because, year in and year out, there are hundreds if not thousands of young fresh faces, equally if not more talented, seeking their own chance to prove their worth, the young basketball scion realizes soon enough that if he could not hack it, not even daddy could save him.
Don’t you wish this were also the case in the other “given” in Filipino life, politics I mean?
Don’t you wish voters were as demanding of the qualifications of their representatives as the team managers of their players? Don’t you wish hearing political leaders talk as if their elective posts are family heirlooms to be passed from generation to generation were just actually spoken lines in the script of a comedy show?
Unfortunately, the spoken lines — and the line of thinking — are real; this is how our political leaders think. But that’s because over years and years and years you and I have been far more demanding of our basketball teams (and even beauty contestants) as we have been of our political leaders — the men and women who shape our lives with the policies they craft, while spending our hard-earned tax money on programs that have more bang on paper than on the ground.
Basketball players have to prove they’re worth the adulation we grant them, otherwise their careers are short ones; politicians? It’s family property, remember? So voters are only carrying out their ministerial duties.
Who is willing to bet that 2022 will be different?
