Having written about the Ateneo men’s basketball team for the last four years – covering them if you will – not just on a game-to-game basis but also even in the off-season and pre-season, there have been a lot of interesting stories, anecdotes or bits of information that I always found to be of great interest for the die hard fan.
As a youngster, John Feinstein’s A Season On the Brink (about the 1985-86 Indiana Hoosiers' US NCAA season), Jack McCallum’s Unfinished Business (about the 1990-91 Boston Celtics), and Sam Smith’s The Jordan Rules (about the Chicago Bulls’ 1990-91 Championship season), enthralled me. They provided a look inside teams that were far from the gloss of television. The athletes weren’t the demi-gods from that slick and carefully PG-world that NBA Commissioner David Stern would present to us but people who are like you and me with foibles, problems, phobias, funny bones, three-dimensional characters, and hang-ups. They were revealing at times disappointing (to find out that your heroes aren’t how you figured them to be), but ultimately the reads were satisfying and interesting.
Now as a professional writer, I wanted to write something similar featuring our favorite basketball team. It wasn’t easy. I must say that covering the Blue Eagles is difficult and more than any other local team pro or amateur. The work initially topped 120 pages without pictures. But parts of it had to be removed for the sake of privacy and not re-opening old wounds. I might have chafed at that because what secrets are there today? In a program that includes several dozens of people, word and loose lips are bound to filter out.
But if secrecy it is then so be it. After all, it’s hard to break one’s word.
The 18th Banner was fun to write. When people ask why Season 71 and not Season 72, I have this one answer – that first year of the back-to-back represented a lot. After we had won in 2002, there were jokes going around that we would not win again in a while even if we made the finals the following year. After the misfortune of the 2006 finals where we were a layup short of winning it again, one had to wonder if the team was ever going to scale the summit again.
Season 71 was a trying year for many reasons. There were a thousand and one stories to tell of the cast therein. The team was basking in a celebrity status that is only accorded few teams but they had yet to win. And win they did against La Salle. Given the recent failures against them, it was momentous.
That year also saw the controversial stewardship of Chito Narvasa as UAAP Commissioner, the slay try on FEU Tamaraw Marnel Baracael, the final year of Dindo Pumaren as UE Coach, the return to the Adamson bench by Leo Austria, and the first year of Aboy Castro on the UP Maroons coaching staff.
The year was colorful and controversial yet it all added up to Ateneo’s 18th banner.
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