IN what promises to be a must, entertaining and informative read on the glory years of Philippine basketball, the book “When We Were Champions,” written by veteran journalist Noel Albano, was launched yesterday during the Philippine Sportswriters Association Forum at the Philippine Sports Commission conference room.
“It’s a book that begged to written, a search for our identity as a basketball nation,” said Albano, who came with contemporary and fellow former sports scribe Ray Roquero, whose Anakalusugan party-list is the publisher of the basketball tome.
The book, whose foreword was written by Roquero and also features an introduction by sportscaster Sev Sarmento, is being published five decades after the Filipino cagers last saw action in the 1972 Munich Olympics and nearly four decades after the country last won an Asian title in 1986.
Albano, the former managing editor of the newspaper Malaya and House deputy secretary general during the term of Speaker Jose de Venecia, jokingly said that his labor of love took over a decade to complete “fueled by whisky and beer.”
On a more serious vein, he said: “How Filipinos made themselves a dominant force is a basic question the book seeks to answer. The other question is more difficult: how did we lose our way to the Olympics and the Asian championships?
“The book presents an array of hardcourt demigods of the ‘feel-good’ era (of Philippine basketball),” he said, referring to such greats as Caloy “The Big Difference” Loyzaga and Lauro “The Fox” Mumar, among others.
“It is a treat for Filipino fans, knowing the great passion we have for the game. And it’s a shing inspiration to our players and officials who aspire to regain our lost glory,” Roquero said during the book launch, three days before the opening of the FIBA World Cup.
Behind extensive research, Albano said the book delves into the process behind the country’s basketball success on the world stage and “the epic blunders and policy decisions” that led to its decline.
“I can only hope that who gets to read it will find the stories to be dramatic, inspiring and uplifting,” he said during the public sports program supported by the PSC, Philippine Olympic Committee, San Miguel Corp. Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. and Milo.
Albano said the book takes readers back in time, during the country’s most glorious years in the sport.
“You will read about the tales by our elders. The great Philippine teams of the ‘50s and ‘60s and further back to 1911. It covers a period of six decades (until 1973),” said Albano.
He said the men behind the book exerted the “best possible effort and got the best possible assistance,” and that it was written “as objectively and as honestly as possible.
“Now that it’s been printed, I leave it all to destiny. It’s a labor of love — 10 years in the making. It’s about time we wrote a book about the history of Philippine basketball,” said Roquero, adding: “Reading this book is like watching Netflix.”
Albano said the next move is to knock on the doors of the country’s leading bookstores and the Department of Education on the possibility of distributing the book in schools, colleges and universities nationwide.
“It’s about what made us great and what made us lose our way, when Filipinos were nearly unbeatable and what made us a basketball nation,” added Albano, who spent countless hours digging deep in different libraries gathering all the content needed to make the book a reality.
