Naturalized players still can’t play as locals

THE PBA’s door remains shut on naturalized players wishing to suit up as locals, for now.
PBA Chairman Ricky Vargas admitted this but added that while the pro league has yet to tackle the matter, they are open to the idea.

“Sa ngayon, the door is closed pa on that, that they become local players in the pro league.

We have not looked at it favorably at the moment,” Vargas said last Saturday on Radyo5 92.3 News FM’s Power and Play program hosted by former PBA Commissioner Noli Eala.
“But this is, again, the changing landscape of basketball,” he added.

- Advertisement -

In a match pitting TNT and Rain or Shine in the Governors Cup last Dec. 26, former Gilas Pilipinas center and naturalized player Andray Blatche took to Twitter to express his desire to see action in Asia’s first play-for-pay league in response to one of the game’s highlight plays.

“I wanna come (and) play,” Blatche said.

The 6-foot-11 Blatche served as the nationals’ naturalized cager from 2014 to 2019.

A former Washington Wizard drafted 49th overall in 2005 who also had a stint with the Brooklyn Nets, Blatche played in two FIBA World Cups (2014 and 2019), the 2015 FIBA Asia Championship, and the 2016 Olympic qualifying tournament.

Marcus Douthit, another naturalized Filipino, echoed Blatche’s thoughts two days later last Dec. 28.

“@pbaconnect, when (will) the PBA let the naturalized players play in the PBA?” posed Douthit on Twitter.

Douthit anchored the original amateur-laden Smart Gilas squad from 2011 to 2014.

Unlike Blatche, Douthit had already played in the PBA although as an import for the now-defunct Air21 ballclub and Blackwater in the 2012 and 2015 midseason Commissioner’s Cups.

The amiable Tropang Giga governor and ABAP chairman maintained naturalized players should also be given the chance to play in the PBA.

“Our naturalized players who have served the country should at least be given a chance to play with us,” Vargas said.

“If they can play in the national team, why can’t they play in the PBA?”

In May last year, President Duterte signed Senate Bill No. 1892 seeking to grant Filipino citizenship to 6-foot-10 Ateneo big man Ange Kouame.

The hulking Kouame, 24, is also seen as a vital cog in the Philippine five’s campaign in the 2023 FIBA World Cup the country is co-hosting with Japan and Indonesia next year.