Being Isaac Go

Being Isaac Go

by rick olivares

Hey, Isaac… wake up. Let’s play basketball.

Isaac Go wouldn’t get up from his sleep. If you ask him about the times when his older brother Gian would ask him to play hoops with him, he preferred to get the four hours of extra sleep. Isaac jokingly thinks the extra sleep helped him grow taller (he stands six feet and eight inches now).

While you cannot teach height, it’s tougher when you try to teach the game to – and these are his own words -- a gangly kid with two left feet, stigmatism, and who was slow, and everything else that describes the anti-thesis of a basketball player.

What you can teach a young and impressionable kid is to pay attention, be respectful, and have a good head above his shoulders.

If you ask Isaac Go about basketball, you’ll associate those killer three-pointers against Far Eastern University and La Salle. Killers. Game winners. Championship points. He will smile. But in the next sentence, he will also tell you about his first ever game in the UAAP three seasons ago when he came into the game during garbage time against Adamson. He immediately committed an illegal screen and was whistled for a foul.

He will tell you how in high school, players like Hope Christian High School’s John Apacible and Clint Doliguez and San Beda’s Arvin Tolentino – who would become his teammates later in Ateneo -- would repeatedly score on him. Sometimes, he’d ask himself after a loss, what am I even doing here?

He will also tell you that he initially played on Team B that for many student-athletes, is like the Gulag. Isaac will also relate that he’s living the dream for his older brother, Gian, who wanted to play in the UAAP for Ateneo as well as his family because he is the first athlete on either side of the family to make a name for himself.

At an uncommon age, Isaac finds himself perhaps blessed not by his achievements – meager, as he downplays them – but by his ability to look at situations differently.

“I have to credit my parents for that,” he says.

Go is the Philippines’ version of the Big Aristotle that was Shaquille O’Neal. Maybe not yet in the power basketball game way but in the pensiveness and insightful manner of a well-bred child.  

“My failures are my motivations,” he adds.

After the Adamson game in his freshman year in college, he was given a chance once more against the Falcons in the second round. He made good use of his five minutes to hound Adamson’s Papi Sarr. He did a creditable job and that earned him more playing time.

In his freshman year in college, he played for Team B in the second semester (he didn’t suit up for the UAAP Blue Eagles at all that year), he just did his best. “While most players look at being on Team B as a death sentence, I always thought it was an opportunity because the players here still have a chance to move up. There’s less pressure here and you’re also playing against opponents who will move up to their Team As.”

He sums it up, “If you don’t seize the opportunity, it will be gone and it will be given to someone else. So you have to be ready for every moment. And you have to work extra hard. Not hard, but extra hard. Extra hardest if that is even possible.”

He’s always had that medium range jumper. But under head coach Tab Baldwin, he extended his range and that opened up his game to a whole new dimension. Like Isaac’s teammate Chibueze Ikeh, another player who also struggled early on, Baldwin egged them on to continue to working on that shot.

“No one wants to fail but in these failures and challenges – you have to learn from them or else you’ll make the same mistakes,” he throws in.

Another reason why he has adopted that attitude is because of Gian. It was Gian who aspired to play for the Blue Eagles in the UAAP. It was Gian who harbored PBA dreams. It was Gian who pushed him to get up and forget the four hours of sleep in order to shoot baskets (to also rebound for the kuya), and to play one-on-one. And if you want to know who can best stop Go, it isn’t Ben Mbala although he’d certainly be up there. It would be his kuya who taught him a lot.

Watching Go succeed in his young career, I cannot help but think, Isaac, is the patron saint for tall, gangly, and untalented kids who are overlooked. I saw him play for his entire high school career and I have to admit I was unimpressed. The stars of those Golden Stallions squads were his teammates Kyles Lao, Jarrell Lim, and Tyler Tio. When he went to Ateneo (his mom, Carol, and Gian also went to Ateneo), I thought, yeah, he’s tall so he’s another five fouls to guard Mbala.

But no. He turned his game around 180 degrees that he’s Mr. Clutch, he’s finally a champion, and now on the national pool. And that is something that pushes him to get better too. “I know it would make Gian and my family proud,” he says.

When we spoke the other day at the Asul café at the Moro Lorenzo Sports Center inside the Ateneo campus, some high school kids were having some pizza when they saw Go outside making his way in. One kid got tongue tied and couldn’t only excitedly point as his classmates turned around in amazement.

Go sheepishly smiled. He is uncomfortable with – let’s call it – stardom. He’s just a few years older than these kids and while shy about posing for photos with people, he will always accommodate a request for one.

The self-deprecating and good nature is refreshing. He bids goodbye and then he’s off. He may be a bright and young basketball star but he has to run some errands for his folks.