Yankees on the Brink?

Even at the bottom of the standings, the New York Yankees are hogging the limelight. Alex Rodriguez’ torrid April gave way to a torrid May but not of the kind that translates into hits, home runs, batting average, and ultimately wins. Jason Giambi is on the hit parade by Major League Baseball, the media, and the fans for his admission of using steroids just when the team doesn’t need any more distractions. Carl Pavano went from pitching hope to hopeless case. The Yankees, who lost the Dice K sweepstakes to rival Boston Red Sox, went out to get another Hideki Irabu in Kei Igawa (if you don’t remember Irabu then you know what I mean). Joe Torre and Brian Cashman’s job security has once more been the talk of town ad infinitum since their 2004 meltdown against the Boston Red Sox.

Whew… and the sub-plots aren’t even done. When you think about it, A-Rod’s pre-season admission of the frostiness of his relationship with team captain Derek Jeter was an ominous portent of the season to come. Andy Pettitte must be wondering if coming back to New York was the right decision when he could have re-upped with the Houston Astros.

But this isn’t the Bronx Zoo as chronicled by its mid-1970’s fun loving and Cy Young-winning closer Sparky Lyle when he recounted the clubhouse turmoil that followed the signing of free agent signee Reggie Jackson. In case you weren’t born then, Jackson even before his first at-bat in pinstripes declared that he was the straw that was going to stir the Yankees’ drink and not (catcher and team captain) Thurman Munson who could “only stir it bad.” The late Billy Martin, who was the Yankees’ manager then got into the act as he openly feuded with Jackson. And it didn’t end there when the team’s principal owner George Steinbrenner brought in closer Goose Gossage despite the presence of Lyle. Were fireworks? Hell yeah and that was an understatement. Though eventually, they won two out of the four World Series they played from 1977 to 1981.

The Joe Torre era of the Yankees may only be comparable to Casey Stengel’s fabled run in the late 1950’s but just like the old perfesser’s tenure – for all his success, he’s only as good as his last win. So how long ago was that?

Torre may have near deity status in the Big Apple but the end is clearly near and maybe even cruelly in this writer’s honest opinion, the managerial change may be a season or two too late. Sure the Bronx Bombers may have made the post-season 12 consecutive times but this year unless they embark on another miraculous comeback shades of 1978, then this season will be one of big change and we’re not just talking about the extremely hot summer morphing into another brutal winter.

This $200 million line-up of All Stars can’t seem to live up to its expectations. It’s not that players have been selfish or even looking out for their own stats. They’ve been for the most part quiet and workman-like in their approach to the game. It’s the lack of fire and the unfortunate combination of bad luck that has hounded this team since it’s Hall-of-Fame bound closer Marian Rivera gave up a bloop single to Luis Gonzalez that cost the Yankees the 2001 World Series title. Maybe they should bring back the sainted Paul O’Neill, Jim Leyritz, or even Roger Clemens to bean someone to put some fight and sense of urgency into pinstipe apathy.

Oh, they’re bringing Clemens back? The Rocket may still be one of the better pitchers out there at age 44 but to even ask him to resuscitate a season that is slowly spiraling out of control. But if he does and leads them to the title then the $28 million they’re paying him will be peanuts. Yet just when he’s ready to take the mound against the Chicago White Sox, he’s sidelined with a groin injury forcing pitching coach Ron Guidry – who’s familiar with all these distractions having been a part of those 70’s title teams – to recall Igawa (2-1 with a 7.63 ERA) who’s been demoted in the minors for almost a month now trying to rework his delivery.

Clemens’ recurring groin injury has troubled him for the last five years but if he heals fast enough, he’ll be making his debut in front of an adoring home crowd in the Bronx. But Clemens’ addition could be the straw that will break the camel’s back. His rider stipulates that he can choose not to join the team during days when he isn’t pitching and already a few Yankees have muttered under their breath their dismay over this preferential treatment. And should the Rocket’s come back be anything less than a big bang then this season is over much like the team’s high-priced cheerleader Carl Pavano.

So what else can go wrong? Chien Ming-Wang who has been the team’s best pitcher over the last two years is struggling after an injury that cut his pre-season short and forced him to miss the first few weeks of the 2007 campaign. Lead off hitter Johnny Damon’s hobbled. The Red Sox’ Mike Lowell knocked out New York’s first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz for a couple of weeks while running the base paths. How’s that for rubbing one’s face in the dirt? The starting pitching staff needs virtual relief as everyone save Andy Pettitte has gone down to various ailments. And as a sign of their current hitting woes, outfielder Bobby Abreu jokingly asked for the ball after sending a ball through the gap for a double in last week’s win against Boston. Although they won two of their last three games versus Boston, the Yankees are still behind by 12 ½ games. In the first game of the last series against Boston, the Yanks teed off on knuckleballer Tim Wakefield for the third time this year.

Now if they only had Wakefield on the mound everyday then they’d continue to look like world-beaters. Unfortunately reality is the Yankees are fast becoming irrelevant in the standings while serving as fodder for the tabloid pages.

Teach the Children

What are we teaching our children today? Collegiate sports are supposed to be a test of character and determination. A venue for spirited and friendly competition. And the last bastion of purity in athletics where the game is played for the sheer love of it and the glory of the school. Next to representing one’s country, playing for the school is a badge of honor that not even a multi-million peso contract in the pros will duplicate.

But the state of the college game is in rapid decline. In many ways, it is more cutthroat than the pro game. Schools have engaged in a virtual arms race stockpiling blue chippers and potential wunderkinds. For what – a trophy, bragging rights, a league record, to cash in on the mega contracts their players will sign when they’re pro-bound? It’s gotten to the point where morals and playing by the book will leave your school at the bottom of the cellar where one upsmanship behind the sidelines is crucial in the hunt for a championship.

In National Athletic Association of Schools, Colleges, and Universities (NAASCU), one league member, unhappy over the transfer of some its super senior players to a rival, asks the board to adopt a rule that renders anyone of the age of 25 ineligible to play. Effective immediately. Even more surprisingly, the other schools ratify the rule. “Malakas yung impluwensya ng iskwelahan nila,” says one school rep who asks to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. No matter if that school has been lording it over the league. But c’mon guys. Eligibility in your league is a joke.

And the grand old league itself, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has stood pat after its suspension of Philippine Christian University for violations of its high school basketball team when there are allegedly other infractions by the other varsity squads. So now what happens? Was anyone punished? It was clear that some people weren’t telling the truth. And it is certainly hard to believe that a coach or even the players themselves could only perpetuate the identity switching. How could these boys be providing spurious diplomas and transcripts when they were never even enrolled in St. Mary’s in Cebu? According to league sources, the investigation is still ongoing. Where it ends up no one knows because as a NCAA policy board member said, “We’re a family here. We don’t want to destroy the league.”

Over at the University Athletics Association of the Philippines (UAAP), just as new line-ups and rookies are eagerly looked out for at the start of the season, basketball observers wonder what new controversy will rear its ugly head when the games get going. It seem that the board passes rules or statutes to suit the whims of some or to curtail the programs of others. Furthermore, they have shown no balls whatsoever when it comes to policing its ranks.

A few years ago, they suddenly decided that masteral students were no longer eligible to play. But they now allow masteral students to suit up, provided they continue their education at the same school. But again, why wasn’t this discussed during that meeting? I’m sure these distinguished board members would have dissected the whys and wherefores and implications of the rule. So why change it again? So was it a knee-jerk reaction because one school made use of these mercs to bolster their championship bid?

In 2004-05, it was suddenly decided to limit the basketball team’s line-up to 14 players from a previous high of 16. This year, it’s up again to 15. Hey, we’ve got an awesome recruit here and we should have this guy in the line-up right away. Let’s put in on the table to increase next year’s teams to 16 players once more!

This year in the wake of the controversial transfer of FEU-FERN’s high school players to UP, the league passes a rule that prevents graduating high school players from migrating to other members’ college teams without first seeking permission from their alma mater. If not they have to sit out a year of residency. A UAAP board member says that it has been something on the table over the years but is suddenly passed in the wake of the defection of Socrates Rivera and Mark Lopez to UP. “The Soc Rivera Rule” as it has come to be known, “is supposed to prevent the piracy of homegrown players. The rule is short sighted at best and leaves room for plenty of skewed interpretation. But then again, it also just tilted the talent pool towards the rival NCAA.

But that’s not all, so what the heck happened to the suspension of DLSU? Who were the culprits behind this? Were there any changes? What happened to the Ombudsman’s investigation? Why did it take so long for the investigation to conclude? And why wasn’t the team docked with a year of playing eligibility?

During last UAAP season, what really happened to University of the East’s Bon Bon Custodio? There are all these speculations about the player having compromised the team. If that is so, was there a proper investigation? If the speculations are true then it not only affects the UE team but the league’s image as a whole.

And there is the never-ending talk about game fixing that is said to have been around forever. So does not acknowledging it mean that it’s beneath them or that it doesn’t exist? C’mon, let’s all not be naïve schoolboys here. There’s a shroud of silence over the league leaving everyone to speculate. Everyone knows better but the powers that be would rather sweep it under the rug. To save the league? To protect some alumni because they brought a few titles to the school?

When Ron Jacobs first took over the San Miguel Beermen after Norman Black’s departure, the first thing he gave his players like Mike Mustre, Yves Dignadice, and Art De La Cruz was the Philippine Basketball Association’s book on officiating guidelines to study. They didn’t touch a basketball for a few days as they were constantly drilled and grilled repeatedly over the league rules. They learned how to use the rules to force opponents into offensive and defensive violations.

In the collegiate arena, it seems that people study the rulebook to see how they cheat or even manipulate rules to suit their purposes. The battle isn’t just won on the court, gentlemen. The boardroom victory is just as crucial.

And these are the people are supposed to be the molders of men and women into productive citizens. No wonder our country is like this.

The Soc Rivera Rule

Soc Rivera hasn’t played one minute of college ball and he’s already made an impact on UAAP college hoops. Although not in the manner he wanted.

Rivera just graduated from FEU-FERN and played on the Baby Tams junior squad that lost to the Ateneo Blue Eaglets in last season’s cage wars. Like anyone who harbors hoop dreams, Soc Rivera wants to play basketball. But he’d like to be a student as well.

Like some of his other teammates, they were being groomed to move up to the FEU seniors team that was going through an overhaul after a failed seniors campaign in Season 69.

Unfortunately, Rivera along with teammates, Dexter Rosales, Jomar Paulino, and Mark Lopez are no longer interested in playing for FEU and instead are trying out and practicing for the UP Maroons.

It was Rosales and Paulino who first showed up for the seniors’ team tryouts in November 2006. UP Team Manager Bombit Silva got in touch with FEU Athletic Director Mark Molina that Rosales and Paulino were trying out for UP to which Molina said was all right since it was only Jonas Paguia, Mark Lopez, and Socrates Rivera they intended to elevate to FEU's senior squad. A “gentleman’s agreement” was reached between the two schools regarding any more transfers of its recently graduated high school players.

A few weeks later, Lopez walked into the UP tryouts accompanied by two of his high school professors. The UP coaching staff apprised FEU’s Anton Montinola and Molina of the situation and a compromise was reached: they would release Lopez provided that he finish his stint with FEU in the Fr. Martin Cup’s completion in March.

But in January of 2007, Rivera asked Lopez to accompany him to the UP coaching staff to signify his intent to play for the Maroons. The UP coaches informed him of the agreement with FEU and that if he really wanted to move to the Diliman school, he had to secure his release from FEU on his own. Silva then got in touch once more with Molina to inform him of the latest developments. Rivera promised to inform FEU team management of his intentions.

From that point on, Rivera did not practice nor keep in touch with UP although Rosales and Paulino said that their former high school teammate was still bent on transferring to the Maroons.

Last April 11, Maroons’ assistant coaches Ramil Cruz and Jojo Villa went to Rivera’s hometown of Pampanga to once and for all ascertain his intent to play. They found Rivera playing for a Pampanga All-Star basketball team that was campaigning for a Gubernatorial candidate. The coach of the Pampanga All-Star squad was an assistant to Villa when he was the mentor of the Nueva Ecija Patriots in the now-defunct Metropolitan Basketball League. It was this coach who brought Arwind Santos and Rivera to FEU’s attention. Rivera apologized for his failure to keep the communication lines open owing to a lost mobile phone but he promised to settle matters within a week.

But last April 20, Rivera called UP from FEU to inform them that Molina agreed to release him to UP provided that he settle some financial obligations to the school. But when Rivera and his father went to the school registrar, he was surprised to find out that his scholarship was revoked and that he had to pay back the P116, 000.00 FEU paid for his scholarship. According to Rivera, he was never informed by Molina about his revoked scholarship.

But how can the scholarship be revoked after the school year when he had already fulfilled his academic and athletic obligations to the school? The registrar informed the Riveras that the directive had come from university management and that they should talk to Molina f they had any questions about the dues.

Curiously, last May 22, during the UAAP board meeting, a new eligibility rule was passed that stipulated incoming freshmen who were transferees from other UAAP member schools to sit out a year of eligibility before suiting up for their new school. The rule was passed 4-2 with Ateneo and UP voting against what is now being referred to as the Soc Rivera Rule.

Passing Heat

The NBA playoffs have produced highly memorable moments, game-winning shots, performances, and meltdowns. This year, well, you can add “the pass” to it.

There are currently two passes that have made huge headlines in the playoffs. There’s the League Pass that the NBA has bestowed upon the San Antonio Spurs at the expense of the Phoenix Suns, and there’s “the Pass” by LeBron James that has his Cavaliers down by a game to new nemesis, the Detroit Pistons.

Watching the final seconds of Game One of the Eastern Conference Finals between Detroit and Cleveland, the Cavs were down 76-78 with the ball in their hands for either a tie of the win. LeBron James beat Tayshaun Prince on a quick first step that forced Rip Hamilton to help out. Even as the play unfolded, it was obvious that the help that Hamilton put up wasn’t going to stop LeBron from getting off a shot or immortalizing him in some slam-up poster. But the Boy-King elected to pass to a wide-open Donyell Marshall from the right corner pocket. Marshall, who had torched the New Jersey Nets in game six of the Eastern Semis with six treys, missed the shot and the Pistons sank another free throw for an ugly 79-76 win.

Cleveland coach Mike Brown said after reviewing the ill fated “pass” that "Donyell could have had a cup of coffee -- and a sandwich" but acknowledged that James still could have taken the shot.

But that isn’t all that James is taking heat for. There’s the matter of scoring only 10 points and taking no free throws in 45 minutes of action. For all of James’ otherworldly hops, basketball observers had constantly chided him for passing up shots during crunch time preferring to pass off to teammates like Damon Jones, Flip Murray (the year before), Marshall ad infinitum.

Last season, the Cavs hovered around .500 long enough that the fractious Indiana Pacers were clearly in their rearview mirror. A strong post-season where the Cavs nearly upended the Pistons was interpreted that the long-suffering Cleveland franchise and James were ready to ascend to the NBA throne. But instead, the team slacked somewhat back into inconsistency and finished with the same 50-32 record as the previous year. And the gripes about James’ game returned.

Former NBA All-Star and current TNT analyst Charles Barkley has scored James’ propensity to disappear in the clutch. “Four years he’s been in the league,” said the ever-loquacious Round Mound of Rebound. “That’s more than enough to learn how to step up and become prime time. LeBron has to be a little more selfish with the ball during crunch time if he wants to go to the next level. But most of all, he should learn how to finish.”

Last season, after missing a potential game winner against the Los Angeles Lakers, the Boy-King passed up a pair of shots during crunch time against the Denver Nuggets and Portland Trailblazers.

Said Charlotte Bobcats guard and former Cav Brevin Knight: “’Bron ain’t just in Allen’s (Iverson) and Kobe’s (Bryant) league yet. Those guys make it happen. But he’ll get there. No way he won’t.”

“To be great,” said Boston Celtic great Tommy Heinsohn. “You have to have that willingness to fail. You can’t be afraid to take the last shot.”

“I don’t need to hit the nail on the coffin to put teams away,” James defended himself in the wake of criticisms levied his way. “Clutch playing means knowing what kind of play to make at the last minute. It could be a pass that leads to the basketball or even a stop.”

Nevertheless, basketball observers would still like to see a killer instinct in James. A kind of clutch game that borders on the mythic (see Reggie Miller’s end game heroics). “Just do it,” Barkley jabbed back.

Still, “the Pass” as it now infamously dubbed, will be tabloid, chat room, and water cooler fodder until LeBron James brings his Cavs back. But as it was with a certain former player who used to wear #23 and was constantly stymied by an earlier incarnation of Bad Boys -- every series, every failure is one step up the ladder to championship glory.


Memorable Passes in NBA Playoff History
- Michael Jordan’s pass to Steve Kerr for the game-winning shot over the Utah Jazz in Game Six of the 1997 NBA Finals
- Larry Bird steals Isiah Thomas’s inbounds pass then dishes of to a streaking Dennis Johnson to eke out a 108-107 Game 5 over the Detroit Pistons in the 1987 Eastern Conference Finals
- John Stockton’s pass to Karl Malone in Game Four of the 1997 NBA Finals with less than a minute to go to give the Jazz a 74-73 lead they would not relinquish to the Chicago Bulls

Jobe’s Ladder

Mean Streets
He lives in Cervini Hall, the men’s dorm inside Ateneo, right now. But every now and then he goes home to Sampaloc, Manila which will always be home to him. In the moments between catching up with relatives, friends, and neighbors, Jobe Sherwin Nkemakolam, all 6’3” of him looks up at the sky and dreams.

The Galicia area of Sampaloc is clean now; the local Kagawads having cleaned up the drug and gang-infested neighborhood. But when he was a kid, Jobe ran with the neighborhood kids and pretty much got involved with all the rowdiness. There were two things that stuck with him during those formative years and shaped him as a person: one was the color of his skin, and the other, the love of family.

Born of a Nigerian father and a Filipina mother, Jobe literally stood out from the rest. His height and his dark-skin color made him impossible to miss. For a while there, he thought he’d become a boxer because that’s all he did – fight. “I did well enough in my elementary years,” recalls Jobe. “But I fell short of honors because I was always getting into fights.” As he got older, Jobe’s friends would leave him out of their gang fights because he was easy to recognize and it made getting even easier for rival gangs.

That was fine with his grandmother, Soledad Eleria, and his uncles Ben Carino and Joey Eleria, who helped raise him and constantly reminded that the only way out of their poverty was staying away from trouble and getting an education. Although he stayed away from the crazy stuff that his friends were smoking and getting into trouble for, Jobe finally woke up from the stupor of teenage angst when a friend was literally shot and killed right before his eyes.

And then he remembered his dream of wanting to go to America where people would also accept him for the color of his skin.

The Breaks of the Game
Basketball. Given his height, it was a sport he naturally gravitated towards easily. He performed reasonably well with the RP Youth Team and soon had for an audience coaches, scouts, and managers of the country’s top colleges.
After one game he found himself in front of one of Ateneo’s scouts and Fr. Carmelo Caluag who was then working out of the university’s alumni office. The story is nothing new. All the other schools dangled monthly salaries and other perks, but Ateneo’s offer intrigued him.

“They were interested in me as a person,” recalls Jobe of that moment that would change his life. “Basketball is what got me to the Ateneo. But Ateneo is going to help me meet the challenges of the outside world.”

When he decided that he was going to Ateneo, some coaches, including one who played for the school’s arch-rival yet mentored another university, made one last pitch to land the services of this emerging force in the paint. “Kilala ka namin,” said the coach. “Hindi ba bobo ka? Paano mo kakayanin yung Ateneo, eh, mahirap doon?”

The words stung and still burn to this very day.

At an early age, Jobe Nkemakolam was exposed to so much adversity. He had to bear with the taunts of “sino ang tatay mo” and “negro.” They were always hard up but his mother, Beverly, who works in the Forensic Department of the National Bureau of Investigation, his grandmother and uncles and some family friends like the Madrigals, Yapyucos, and Medialdeas, found ways to make ends meet.

His Uncle Joey worked as an extra hand on a ship for a measly P5,000 a month. But his attitude towards his meager work status and pay was this is only temporary, it’s just a stepping stone. And his uncle did move up the ranks and eventually earned and saved enough to move out of Galicia and put up his own house.

That made a huge impression on young Jobe and he looked forward to helping Ateneo win another basketball championship as a stepping stone to providing for his family and proving all his detractors wrong.

Jobe cracked the Blue Eagles’ 2004 line-up. Although the year is more remembered as Larry Fonacier’s aborted last flight and the subsequent crash in the Final Four, Jobe remembers it only for the eight minutes he played all season long. Eight minutes.

Epiphany in the Outfield
He understands it now, the benching, but back then, he felt disillusioned and betrayed. He gained weight and fell out of shape and tendonitis wore down his knees and told on his game. As a result, he was cut from the line-up the succeeding year. For a while Jobe considered transferring to another school, but instead opted to concentrate on his studies.

In that time away from the team, he was served grim reminders of the realities facing him. His mother is older and suffers from diabetes. He sought the advice of the coach that he hoped to play for at the time of his recruitment, Joel Banal.

“I told Jobe to reflect on what happened and why he was unhappy,” says Banal who helped steer Ateneo to its third UAAP basketball crown in 2002. “Things happen for a reason and when bad things happen, it’s all about how we respond to it and the choices we make.”

The elevation of Zion Laterre from Ateneo Team B inspired him to once more take up basketball. Armed with a newfound optimism, Nkemakolam slimmed down and got into playing shape. And when he took to the floor as a starter for Ateneo’s first game in the on-going Fil-Oil Pre-Season Tournament against De La Salle, he felt happy and excited all over again. In five games thus far, Jobe has been averaging a double-double in points and rebounds.

His mother has to fight back the tears when she watches her son play. She feels proud and clips the papers when her son’s name appears in the game accounts.

And Jobe, the eldest of five children is happy now. He’s back in the Blue Eagles line-up and he has his confidence back. Plus, his younger brother Romiko, will be suiting up for the National University Juniors team in the coming season. “This is going to be an eventful year,” smiles Jobe. “I can feel it in my bones. But after college, hopefully I can play in the PBL and if I’m really lucky, in the PBA so I can earn money to pay for my sibling’s education and for my mom’s health bills.”

Now he has another opportunity to make his dreams come true.

CSI Las Vegas

Crime Scene: Las Vegas, Nevada.
EMT: We have a pulse. Boxing’s still alive! Prepare the defibrillator.

EMTs scurry about.
Detective 1: It seems the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Oscar De La Hoya bout broke existing pay-per-view records. So does that mean that boxing’s death is greatly exaggerated?

Detective 2: Hmm. For all we know the regurgitating noise that followed might be the sport’s death rattle. Like the body still hasn’t gotten the brain’s message.

Detective 1: You can’t say that. We deal in facts here not conjecture! We’ll have to examine the crime scene for evidence. Bring in the forensic guys.

(CSI personnel enter the room)
Forensic Detective: If we look at the boos that followed the announcement of the split decision and the feeling by many that Oscar De La Hoya was robbed, we can infer that it was another unsatisfying end to a much-hyped match. But that is by no means conclusive. We need something more substantive.

Detective 2: The sport has been sucker punched once too often it’s a wonder it survived this long.

Detective 1: Any possible suspects?

Forensic Detective: From the trauma evident -- it took a fist to the face and a knee to the abdomen. And a kick to the leg. And there’s the matter of the bloody ear…

Detective 2: Wasn’t that the second bout of Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield – the infamous Bite Fight?

Forensic Detective: (coughs) Actually, I was going to say, it could have been Mixed Martial Arts and the UFC (Universal Fighting Championship) that perpetuated this attack.

EMT: Heart rate is spiking.

Forensic Detective: Spike is right. Put aside the Mayweather-De La Hoya temporarily, the most watched UFC fight so far in 2007 on Spike TV outdrew the most watched boxing match on television by 73%. That was UFC 70 that featured Mirko “Cro” Cop vs. Gabriel Gonzaga on April 21 that drew 2.8 million viewers as opposed to the Ricky Hatton-Juan Urango bout on January 20 that was seen by 1.5 million people.


And in 2006, the Tito Ortiz-Ken Shamrock UFC fight outdrew boxing’s most viewed event --- that was Winky Wright vs. Jermain Taylor. Ah that’s 4.3 million viewers for UFC and 3.5 for HBO boxing – a difference of 800,000 viewers.

Detective 1: But isn’t boxing alive and well in the Philippines and in Europe?

Forensic Detective: Well, yes it’s popular in the Philippines but in the boxing universe it’s still a drop in the bucket. Vladimir Klitschko, will try to avenge his loss to Lamon Brewester this July in Germany. His last fight there drew some 13 million people.

Detective 2: Then how can you say that boxing’s dead?

Forensic Detective: Remember the time when the Heavyweight Champion used to be like Leonardo DiCaprio, he was the King of the World?

Detective 1: Yeah, those were the days. Ali, Frazier, Foreman…

Detective 2: And there were larger than life boxers like Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Roberto Duran, Alexis Arguello…

Detective 1: Now whom do they have? Before Mayweather-De La Hoya, the last match that people really looked forward to was Lennox Lewis and an over-the-hill Mike Tyson. (chuckles)

Forensic Detective: Well, I don’t think we can just point to MMA as the culprit. Maybe it’s also boxing that set itself up.

Detective 2: You mean they wanted it too look this way? The real perp is from within?

Detective 1: Who is it… Don King? Bong Obero? The Russians? The other promoters? Controversial decisions? Is boxing on its way to being knocked out?

Forensic Detective: Maybe. Maybe not. It may be not be as popular as it once was, but let’s wait until we have more conclusive evidence. We’ll see what happens when UFC signs with ESPN. Yeah, the world awaits.


o O o

Mixed Martial Arts have become more and more popular. The UFC Fight Nights air live on Spike TV and feature many of the biggest names in the world of mixed martial arts. UFC Fight Nights have averaged 2.2 million viewers in the US -- more than the average regular season telecasts of the NBA, NHL, and NCAA basketball on cable television.

UFC 71 will be showing on Solar Sports this coming June. The main cards feature Chuck Lidell v. Quinton Jackson for the Light Heavyweight Championship, Terry Martin vs. Ivan Salaverry in a Middleweight bout, Karo Parisyan vs. Josh Burkman in a Welterweight match, a Light Heavyweight bout that pits Keith Jardine vs. Houston Alexander, and a Middleweight battle between Chris Leben vs. Kalib Starnes.
Quinton “Rampage” Jackson has only been with the UFC for less than four months and he’s already getting his shot at Lidell’s title. Lidell recently dominated Tito Ortiz and Randy Couture and is nigh unbeatable. Liddell, from San Luis Obispo, is coming off a decisive third-round technical knockout of Ortiz at UFC 66 in December 2006, but he acknowledged afterward that he fought with a torn medial collateral ligament in a knee. He declined to reveal which knee was injured, but he said he rejected proposed surgery.

Three-point Daggers & T's

The NBA playoffs make much for water-cooler and coffee shop talk nowadays what with the great action and upsets galore. We’re already halfway done and there’s already much that we can glean from the games:

Nightrider sighting
The reason why the Dallas Mavericks lost is because it was David Hasselhoff who showed up not Dirk Nowitski.

What A Fool Believes
Tracy McGrady has gone the way of Kevin Garnett, a perennial first-round flop (although Garnett did advance deep once). What was he saying about, “It’s all on me?” I thought that it takes five, baby, to win. Guess he forgot that, right? Oh yeah, I forgot too that there’s no truth to advertising.

Sowing the Seeds of Playoff Chaos
Thinking of reseeding because you think that the conference finals should be between Detroit and Chicago and San Antonio and Phoenix? Thank God, the NBA play-offs have showed that the NCAA’s don’t have a monopoly on unpredictability.

There have been some calls from basketball observers that the NBA should either go back to the old format of the seeds being ranked according to their win-loss record or to take a cue from the NHL to reseed every round. The former might be acceptable but that paves the way for the stronger teams t figure in the conference semis and the finals. The latter is intriguing because a true champion should take on all comers but that renders the regular season slate almost useless. Whatever it is, I’m fine with the format now. I like that feeling of unpredictability.

A Bloody Shame
Steve Nash was playing on a bloody nose. Hitting a dagger of a trey. What does that say? MVP for THREE!

Sorry, Dirk. An MVP doesn’t simply play in the last two minutes of Game Five.

Lost in Translation
In his first season with the Cleveland Cavaliers last year, the 6-7 Montenegro native Sasha Pavlovic was asked during a game to play defense if he wanted to stay on the floor. The wiry shooting guard smiled and said, “My defense is my offense.” The Cavs’ coaching staff wasn’t amused and Pavlovic cooled his heels on the bench. After finally showing up in the Game One eastern semi-finals win against the New Jersey Nets scoring 15 points while wearing down Vince Carter, Pavlovic, in a play reminiscent of Tayshaun Prince’s block of a Reggie Miller lay-up, swatted Jason Kidd’s fastbreak lay-up that would have cut the Cavs’ lead down to two.

“I remember saying that (to Cleveland Coach Mike Brown), but I wasn’t serious about it,” said the 23-year old Pavlovic after the game. “He probably took it serious. That’s my fault. He knows I’m going to play good on offense. Only if I play good defensively, he’ll let me stay on the floor. So that’s what I’m trying to do all season.”

Bigfoot sighting
Did you read that news item about this Canadian Member of Parliament who said that Bigfoot must be declared an endangered specie? Well, here’s more evidence to support this astounding piece of public service. That guy in the Basketball TV plug who says that he Ioves the NBA game because of the Seattle Supersonics Sasquatch? What kinda crap answer is that?!

Gut feelings
The NBA ordered Golden State Warriors coach Don Nelson to stop bringing beer to the post-game press conference. Guess they’re worried about how this team has taken on the personality of former Warrior Latrell Sprewell with his fierce and irreverent demeanor aside from his jawing and dunking ways.

Bullied
The Chicago Bulls looked like world-class beaters after dusting off the Miami Heat in the first round. But against the Detroit Pistons… they looked like the Lost Boys in the first two games. In those two games, the Pistons stole the Bulls’ playbook: hustle plays, high-energy, and a team game that saw them record their best win-loss slate since 1998. They’ve been thoroughly outplayed almost everywhere in every facet. And so now they head back to the City of the Big Shoulders searching for answers and hoping that good ole home cooking will serve them well. There have been only seven teams in NBA Playoff history who have bucked a 0-2 hole to win in seven games. And one of those teams was the 1993 Bulls when they went two down to the New York Knicks in the Eastern semis.

But the glaring stat is that the Bulls are outrebounded and have committed more turnovers. Scott Skiles and his staff clearly have their homework done.

Warrior’s predilection for king-sized upsets

IT is perhaps the greatest upset in National Basketball Association (NBA) history. The manner in which the Golden State Warriors finished off the top-seeded Dallas Mavericks was shocking and mesmerizing. There they were, save for Jason Richardson, cast-offs and journeymen players—Baron Davis via Charlotte/New Orleans, Stephen Jackson late of San Antonio and Indiana, and Matt Barnes by way of Sacramento, New York, and Philadelphia—dunking, three-point-shooting, and jawing their way with reckless abandon.

By all rights, it should have been over in five games were it not for four bad calls that sent the Warriors back to Oakland for a sixth match. Maybe it was for the best, to win it right before the 20,000 faithful who have not savored a playoff appearance since 1994 and a second season win since 1992 (against Seattle to whom they fell 3-1).

And now in 2007, they’ll be playing in the second round for the first time since 1991 when they got bounced in five by the edition of the LA Magic Show (with rookie Vlade Divac and vets James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Byron Scott, and (ex-Warrior) Terry Teagle.

As incredible as it seems, Golden State thrives on its underdog image and has made a career out of beating higher seeds.

Warrior King returns

IN 1989, Chris Mullin (now the Warriors’ general manager), finally beat his demons in the bottle and checked out of rehab to be one of the league’s best players. With Mullin’s 26.5 ppg and steady support from Mitch Richmond, Winston Garland, Rod Higgins, Otis Smith, and Ralph Sampson (his last pro team), G-State finished fourth in the West with a 43-39 record. In the playoffs, they met Midwest Division champs Utah Jazz (51-31) behind John Stockon, Karl Malone, Thurl Bailey, and Darrell Griffith.

The Warriors displayed nerves of steel in the last three minutes as they outlasted the Jazz 123-119 in Game One. They repeated their feat with another masterful 99-91 win in Salt Lake City before sending the deflated Jazz home for the summer with a 120-106 demolition in front of a raucous home crowd. Mullin was incandescent in the post-season, upping his scoring to 29.4ppg while adding 5.9rpg and 4.5apg.

Crossover heroes

AFTER falling short of the playoffs the previous year, the Warriors unveiled one of the highest-scoring acts behind “Run-TMC” as the trio of Mr. U-tep two-step Tim Haradway, steady Mitch Richmond, and Chris Mullin collectively scored 72.5 ppg. They finished 44-38; their best record in nine years. Back again in the post-season, the Warriors took on Midwest Division champs San Antonio Spurs (55-27) who were led by the Admiral David Robinson (then in his second year in the league), Sean Elliot, Terry Cummings, Willie Anderson, and a young point guard named Avery Johnson.

The Spurs held serve in the first game 130-121 with a monster game by Robinson. But Golden State stole one in the Alamo Dome with a 111-98 win that shifted the momentum. When the series moved over to Oakland, the Warriors took the pivotal third game 109-106 that knocked the wind out of San Antonio’s sails. The speedy Warriors ended the Spurs’ misery in Game Four with a series-clinching 110-97 win.

Freefall

AS much as Golden State put their faithful on an emotional high, they would invariably get knocked out of the succeeding second round that would be followed by a disappointing freefall the following season.

After eliminating the Jazz in 1989, the Warriors scintillating run ended as they got bounced by the Phoenix Suns of Kevin Johnson, Tom Chambers, Eddie Johnson, Armon Gilliam, Jeff Hornacek, Dan Majerle, and Steve Kerr (who called the Warriors’ history-making Game Six win against Dallas with Marv Albert) in five games. The following season was a hugely disappointing one as they missed the playoffs tumbling to 37-45.

In 1991, Golden State once more fell in the second round this time to the Los Angeles Lakers in five games. In the off-season, Warriors brass felt that they were mercilessly pounded inside by the Laker’s half-court game and a decision was made to break up Run-TMC. Mitch Richmond was traded to the Sacramento Kings for top draft choice Billy Owens. The defense did improve and the Warriors finished third in the 1992 Western standings. But they were upset in the first round by the young and exciting Seattle Supersonics with Ricky Pierce, Derrick McKey, Michael Cage and young studs Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton. In 1993, the team would lose a combined 312 player-games to injury and they missed the post-season bus.

Full Nelson

THERE aren’t many coaches who have created lasting imprints with several franchises. There’s Phil Jackson who made the NBA All-Rookie team with the New York Knicks and played on their two championship teams of the 1970s. He coached the Chicago Bulls’ dynasty in the 1990s and guided another with the Los Angeles Lakers’ three-peat from 2000-’02.

Pat Riley won a title with the Lakers as a player and mentored them to four titles in the 80s. He masterminded the Knicks renaissance of the 90s as well as the Miami Heat’s ascent that culminated with a title in 2006.

But for Don Nelson… his championships may have all come with his time with the Boston Celtics, but he’s turned around the fortunes of many a franchise. He turned Milwaukee into a steady contender in the early 80s before employing his creativity with the Golden State Warriors during his first go-around with them. After an aborted stint with New York, he turned the Mavericks (with terrific support from Mark Cuban) into a power before he turned the reins over to his assistant and former point guard Avery Johnson. And now Nelson is reunited with Mullin in Golden State where both are once more weaving their mojo with the same type of game that they once ran.

No matter what happens in this second round, the Warriors will have put their imprint in this seemingly tepid season. The excitement is back in the Bay Area where they momentarily overshadowed the controversial chase by Barry Bonds of Hank Aaron’s home-run record. It’s been a great spring for them. Now they just have to build on the gains or let history repeat itself.

The Write Stuff

As my fascination for baseball and the New York Yankees grew and intensified during my younger years, a couple of books that I sought out was the much-acclaimed Summer of ’49 and October 1964 both written by David Halberstam. The former chronicled the year when the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox were engaged in a heated pennant race highlighted by the incredible year that Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams had. There were anecdotes about Jackie Robinson, Italian immigrants who used baseball as a way to integrate themselves into mainstream America, how radio was such a big part of turning men into gods, and how television’s infancy told of a high-tech future to come. The latter was about the last hurrah of Mickey Mantle’s Yankees and an era of sustained greatness as they fell to the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series and into the abyss of losing and mediocrity.

I knew I had a good book in my hands as I stayed riveted to my seat and paused only to eat and heed nature’s call. What also fascinated me about David Halberstam’s writing was the meticulous recreation of the bygone eras that came alive for me. It was as if I had traveled back in time and had a front row seat to all the insider action. Halberstam’s prose was a unique mix of first-rate journalism and history.

His writing whetted my appetite for history as a school subject and as choice of reading material. Just when I thought that I knew and heard of every Michael Jordan tidbit out there, Halberstam came back with the even more well-researched tour de force Playing For Keeps that tracked the parallel growth of ESPN, the spread of American pop culture, and the globalization of the game that turned His Airness into the world’s first universal superstar. A truly amazing read.

David Halberstam’s style became a huge influence on my writing and my mania for research, historical facts, and empirical proof. His death the other day in a car accident in Menlo Park, California might have merited a small column or maybe nary a blip on most local sports fans’ radar screen, but it resonates deep inside the fan in me.

Thanks for the inspiration, Mr. Halberstam. You’ll be writing the good book up there.

o O o

As I got older, those Hardy Boys mystery books (I still have the original and complete hardbound set) gave way to Sports Illustrated. I used to buy them at the Rastro in Greenhills that was just about the only store that sold them. If I missed an issue, I’d save up on my allowance and go to Dau to buy at the PX Shops.

If Sportscenter popularized the highlight, Sports Illustrated brought us the “bonus” as its late and famed editor Andre Laguerre coined the magazine’s raison d’etre. It became all about context. It meant going beyond the stats and about using sports as a metaphor for life; a prism for the rush of excitement on the playing field and the solitude between those moments of winning and losing. And that style changed sports writing forever.

Well, for the most part, it’s no longer “FEU Tamaraws gore NU Bulldogs.” It’s – “The FEU Tamaraws proved that they were far from being extinct in Season 69 of the UAAP as they reached in deep inside for that end game poise and game swagger that saw them through consecutive Finals appearances. Yadda yadda yadda.” That gore stuff is for the pedestrian.

I’ll say that David Halberstam is one of the three best baseball writers in my honest opinion; the others being Roger Kahn and Tom Verducci. Jack McCallum, Michael Lewis, and Rick Reilly are also huge influences. There were other non-sports writers I followed: Marc Spitz (the music writer not the swimmer), Nick Hornby, Cameron Crowe, Stephen Ambrose, Timothy Zahn, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, and Peter David to name a few.

As for local papers, I read everybody… Joaquin Henson, Henry Liao, Al Mendoza, Recah Trinidad, Ding Marcelo, (my editor) Jun Lumibao, and Rhea Navarro to name a few. And man, I loved collecting those old Atlas Sports Weekly Magazines.

o O o

Here are some other sports books I’d like to recommend:
Moneyball by Michael Lewis
Pele by Pele
The Life of Reilly by Rick Reilly
A Season On the Brink by John Feinstein
Unfinished Business by Jack McCallum
The Jordan Rules & The Second Coming by Sam Smith
The Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam


o O o

Random thoughts:
- Funny how instead of getting to the bottom of the problem, some officials are conducting a witch-hunt to determine who spilled the beans. Where there’s smoke there’s fire. I’m feeling you, PhilJax. A Ninoy Aquino gets you that the official stays put.

- It’s not quite Remember the Titans, but We Are Marshall is good.

- Alex Rodriguez may be off to one of the greatest individual starts in Major League Baseball history but if you ask me, whether the Yanks recover from their early season woes to win the World Series, this will be his last year in pinstripes.

- If you missed the racism in football special feature in ESPN before the start of the last World Cup, go to youtube and look up European Racism in Football. Having experienced racism first-hand, it just makes my blood boil.

16 Men Out

The Ateneo Men’s baseball team was expected to compete for the UAAP title last season and early on, they ran roughshod over the competition. But still, I wondered how long they could keep it up knowing that the team had many unresolved issues from within. And to the horror and shock of many, the Blue Batters crashed and burned in the second round. It was an inglorious end when Ateneo’s victories were overturned, their semis slot disqualified, and their star rookie Justin Zialcita declared ineligible for failure to submit the Alien Certificate of Registration in time. Although Zialcita spent a few years in the US, he’s been living here for a long time and matriculated at Southridge. Other quarters tried to twist Zialcita’s case as one of fielding an ineligible player and demanded a suspension. That wasn’t too smart of those who wanted to compare the fate of their school with my alma mater’s. Apples and oranges, folks. You can put aside your prejudices and look at the facts of the matter.

The casualty of this all wasn’t simply a lost opportunity for the title but a team in disarray. Their coach, while one of the local game’s best, lost his team’s trust because of his frequent absences during off-season training and his questionable game decisions that told heavily on their morale and confidence. In fact, during a shellacking by eventual champion UST in their second round tiff, the coach sat down in the middle of the game and turned the reins over to an assistant. With the season done, the Blue Batters expressed difficulty in still playing for the coach given all that had happened. Now the coaching position is vacant yet there is still much confusion in the program. The logical selection for the team’s new coach would be baseball great Randy Dizer who has been handling the Ateneo’s high school and elementary teams that have been winning in their age level and who has overseen the development of many of the current seniors players.

However, someone in the school’s athletic department is said to be preventing the selection of Dizer, pitting players against one another and making the team look like a bunch of spoiled malcontents. This official even asked the players what they would like to do about their program head (fermenting dissent, isn’t he?). He has met with the team members individually after which he twisted much of their thoughts and feelings. As a result, some players have expressed notions about sitting out the next campaign. “I went here to study and play baseball,” said one team veteran. “Not to be in the middle of all this politicking.”

Incidentally, it was this official’s job to put Zialcita’s papers in order. What he stands to gain from all of this escapes me.

Wait, it has just gotten uglier. This official has been meddling in the Athletic Council and other varsity teams. The latest victim of his nefarious intercessions is the swimming team’s coach who has worked wonders in turning the former underachieving team into a rising power. The men’s and women’s teams have placed admirably well in the last two seasons but after this official’s undermining the coach and his position, the program is in a state of discord.

And oh yeah, the swim coach has just tendered his irrevocable resignation.

What I don’t really get is that the school knows that some coaches or officials under perform (a bleeping understatement) but they still stick to them. Of course, it’s a collegiate league, not the pro ranks where it’s more cutthroat. But the worst thing one can do is sit on the malaise and let it spread like some disease. The funny thing is some officials privately felt that the volleyball squad needed a coaching change but didn’t do anything. They had to wait until the incumbent one left and when the team floundered this past Season 69, it was expressed that it was the residue of bad coaching and poor training over the past few years. Geez, Louise!

Now if this happened to the basketball program, that person would have been booted out post haste. Not that he could get anywhere close to that program (as well as football’s) if he wished because it’s so well guarded against outside interference.

And the baseball team’s concern is that we’re seeing a repeat of what happened to the swimming team. The school has won a couple of baseball and softball titles but for the longest time it was the UAAP’s doormat. With a solid homegrown program in place, the game has grown steadily popular in Loyola Heights. In fact, the same can be said for Ateneo’s other sports programs. Time was they’d lose many a potential recruit or even players to grades, lack of funds, and a fear of playing for a losing team. Now the school and its teams have become a desirable destination of many athletes.

If I have written about other schools in my column or elsewhere, I am not going to stand pat when it’s my alma mater. In fact, I’ll even come down harder on Ateneo. That’s not what they taught me when I marched, got shot at, and was harassed during those dangerous years after Ninoy Aquino was assassinated. Make no mistake, I love my school and am a third generation Atenean.

Politics and intrigue is something no one can entirely eradicate. I read somewhere that it is in man’s nature to destroy one self. Nevertheless, it’s time to cut the crap and get things in order. We do not need this on our way to the Sesquicentennial.

It’s unfortunate that the 16 men of the baseball team were called out on account of a violation. Let’s make sure that the program doesn’t go down too on strikes. More so when it’s coming from a cancer from within.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

According to:

Oscar de La Hoya, boxer, president of Golden Boy Promotions
It can’t do that! We already signed a contract with the chicken. We’ll sue!

Bob Arum, boxing promoter
The chicken got the best deal in town and it will become even more famous under my watch.

Freddie Roach, boxing trainer
The chicken has been in Manny Pacquiao’s corner for his last 12 fights. So it is only logical to cross the road to be once more by Manny’s side. But the chicken had to ask permission from Oscar de la Hoya to cross the road.

Erik Morales, former World Boxing Champion
Wala siyang katulad kaya nag-cross siya ng road.

Manny Pacquiao, Filipino Global Icon
Pap pa rap pap pap.

Bong Obero, boxing promoter
The chicken crossed the road because it needed to feed its family. And the people on the other side of the road need our chickens to pad their records.

Eric Buhain, GAB chairman
We believe the chicken crossed the road without a license. We intend to ask the NBI to investigate this and we will open it up in every boxing convention that we attend.

Atty. Rudy Salud, distinguished boxing personality
All GAB should do is know how many commissions there are and know the head man of each group and work out an agreement that will put a stop to unlicensed chickens from crossing the road.

Joakim Noah, player, two-time NCAA champion Florida Gators
The chicken stands for something. It’s not all about making money. It’s about winning championships and making history.

Kevin Durant, US College Player of the Year
I think the chicken enjoyed its stay on its side of the road and now it’s ready to cross the other side to join the draft.

Greg Oden, center, Ohio State Buckeyes
The chicken is not entering the NBA. Next question please.

Barry Bonds, player, San Francisco Giants
I think you have to be proud of that chicken. It’s 42 years old and it still crossed the road to chase Hank Aaron’s record. Now don’t give that chicken an asterisk for trying.

Hank Aaron, holder of Major League Baseball’s home-run record
I don’t think I’m going to cross the road to cheer that record-hunting chicken. I’m perfectly happy where I am.

Virginia Congressman Tom Davis, chairman of baseball committee on steroids scandal
We subpoenaed the chicken on suspicion of using steroids. Hopefully, the chicken can shed light on this so we can clean up the sport of baseball.

Michael Rains, Barry Bonds’s lawyer
I think there is an effort to indict that chicken.

Phil Jackson, Los Angeles Lakers coach
I think there’s a witch hunt being conducted on that chicken.

Kobe Bryant, star player for Los Angeles Lakers
Well, they better not piss off that chicken coz it’s going to score 60 points on you.

David Beckham, former Real Madrid midfielder
The chicken has 250 million reasons why it crossed the road.

Fabio Cappelo, Real Madrid coach and manager
We wanted the chicken to stay. We had big plans for it. Since it decided to cross the road, we benched it until the end of its contract with us.

Ramon Calderon, Real Madrid president
The other side of the road isn’t as good as our side. It’s the chicken’s loss. Not ours.

Barros Schelotto, Boca Juniors player transferring to MLS Columbus Crew
The chicken needed a change of air.

Cuauhtemoc Blanco, Mexican football player who transferred from Club America to the Chicago Fire in the MLS
That chicken is one bad boy for crossing the road.

Charles Barkley, NBA all-time great & TNT basketball analyst
Did you see the chicken cross the road? Man, it was old and slow. No way should that chicken referee in the NBA in that condition. If it insists, then I challenge it to a race during the All-Star Game. I’ll bet you I won’t even work up a sweat. When it’s over, the chicken’s tombstone will read, “Keeled over racing the Chuckster.”

Dick Bavetta, NBA referee
That old chicken crossed the road for old people’s rights!

Leo Oracion, first Filipino to summit Mt. Everest
The chicken crossed because the road was there.

Chris Webber, forward, Detroit Pistons via Philadelphia
It was a no-brainer for that chicken to cross the road. It was to win a championship. It needs to win a championship.

Vince Carter, forward New Jersey Nets
I had no idea that the chicken was talking to its agent about opting out of its contract. I believe the chicken is happy on its side of the road.

Basketball Association of the Philippines
If that chicken did cross the road then we’re going to fire it.

Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, former BAP President
The chicken crossed to put an end to the disunity in basketball and so the Philippines could compete once more in international competitions.

Patrick Baumann, Fiba president
If that chicken doesn’t know which side of the road it should be then we will suspend it from all competitions.

Congratulations to our manok Manny Pacquiao for beating Jorge Solis. It wasn’t as exciting as the last two Pacquiao-Morales fights, but credit Solis for taking the fight to Manny.

Check out my nonsports blog at http://1125pages.blogspot.com.

The Rites of Spring & Fall

Last Tuesday evening, my mobile phone rang. “Call” the phone simply read meaning it was from overseas. It was my friend Sam who incredibly was calling from Yankee Stadium for the season opener. The new baseball season was starting. “Where you at, dog? It’s opening night and it’s the last at the House That Ruth Built before it moves across the street to the House That Taxpayers Built.”

I laughed but could hardly understand him for it gets real noisy up in the stands. Sam’s funny. He defies the stereotype. He’s a Christian from Cairo, Egypt, who moved Stateside a decade ago and developed an affinity for baseball. Plus he speaks with a Brooklyn accent after hanging out with all the Italian guys in the neighborhood. And baseball is what got us talking.

Take me out to the ballgame for the annual rites of spring have begun. And baseball is back. It has brought a spring into my tired sporting soul that refuses the already maddening intake of Pacquiao stories and the dog days on a long NBA season. Thank God for the NCAA Finals (too bad Ohio State lost) and the upcoming NBA Play-offs.

Before you react and say, “Those damn Yankees!” Let me try to explain something about New York and the world famous baseball team and its effect on man.

When America emerged a superpower from World War II, New York City became by default, the center of the globe. And right in the middle of that massive cultural and socio-economic change was the grand old game… baseball. And when you talk about the sport, there’s one team that has come to define the sport and cross borders – the New York Yankees.

Since 1903, the Yankees have accounted for 26 World Series titles and 39 pennants. Other teams like the Giants, the Dodgers, and later on, the Mets have had their share of the pie as well, but this is Yankee town no matter what anyone says. More than the Knicks or even the Rangers. Why the famous interlocking “NY” can be found on blazers, caps and jackets just about anywhere in the world? Whereas if you say “Met,” you have to clarify if it’s the Metropolitan Museum or that team that plays in Shea Stadium. This is not to denigrate the Mets (after all, they did foil the Boston Red Sox’s bid in ’86), but quite simply, the Yanks have transcended cultural barriers in more ways than one more than any other team since the Chicago Bulls of the 1990’s.

While New Yorkers take the success of their teams in stride (after all, life in the Big Apple is frenetic enough as it is), it doesn’t mean that they are no less intense or fanatic. While the real theater can be found in the stages of Broadway, Radio City, 42nd Street, the Lincoln Center or Madison Square Garden (where boxing matches, basketball games, hockey games, concerts, heck, even the greatest show on earth – Barnum & Bailey’s Circus -- play all year round), news and gossip about the team in pinstripes are in daily chatter fare. You see, while other teams are just happy to finish .500 or even make the play-offs, in New York, the Yanks not having won a World Series since 2000 despite making it to the play-offs every year since, is construed as a disaster. So it is never casual or faddish to root for the Bronx Bombers. If for some, it’s “we’ll just get them next year;” in New York, it ain’t necessarily so. It takes an entirely different mindset to always be the best and uphold a standard of excellence. There is nothing wrong with wanting to compete or to win (I’m sure that teams wish they had George Steinbrenner’s money). After all, if one is just angling to hover around .500 then they’re doing everyone a disservice.

If you figure that New Yorkers are arrogant because of this, they would surely digress. New Yorkers do not think their city is the most important one; they take for granted that it is. Things outside New York not that important? Maybe it doesn’t matter given all that happens to the city on a daily basis. And if New Yorkers don’t compare themselves to anyone or anything else, it’s because they don’t think there is anything else comparable.

Such is the New York attitude. Maybe that’s why Osama Bin Laden thought to make the city more than any other, save perhaps the nation’s capital, the object of his wrath.

New Yorkers demand excellence. Nothing more, nothing less. And the Yankees doing well is simply business as usual. There is pressure in playing in New York, not just in pinstripes – from the scrutiny of management to the judgment of media and fans; it’s like living in a giant fishbowl under the spotlight. Like the song says, if you can make there, you can make it anywhere. In his autobiography, Me and My Dad, former Yankee outfielder Paul O’Neill wrote of his trade from his hometown Reds to the Yankees: For the ultimate optimist, my announcement that I was no longer a Cincinnati Red but was being traded to the New York Yankees was regarded as one big party. The rest of us were all in tears, and my father was celebrating. “Paul,” he exclaimed, “this is going to be the best thing that ever happened to you.” He added that while Riverfront Stadium was wonderful; the House That Ruth Built was rocking every single night. And this was way before the Joe Torre era began.

Such is playing in New York if not the Yankees. Even the great Michael Jordan did muse to himself: “Although it would have been hard to play for another coach, I always wondered how it would have been to play in New York. I would have seriously considered playing for the Knicks during the 1998-99 season if I were single. New York fans appreciate good players and I always enjoyed playing in Madison Square Garden."

New York is home to two pro basketball teams, the Knicks and the Nets. There are two pro football teams in the Giants and the Jets. The Rangers, the Islanders and the Devils are the pro hockey teams while the Yanks and the Mets round out the reps for the fourth of the major sports leagues. And we haven’t even talked about the Brooklyn Cyclones or even the Staten Island Yankees. Or even the Red Storm.

Ironically, in a city of 12 million, there is room enough for everyone. When the Yankees were bushwhacked by their cross-town rivals the Mets to clinch the season series in 2004, I never heard the end of this from my friends and co-workers on 86th and Lex (and this is in the Upper East, a twenty-minute 4 train ride away to the Bronx) who were all Mets fans. In Elmhurst, Queens, home to a predominantly Indian, Korean, Hispanic and Filipino community, you’d think that you were in the Bronx the way pinstripes litter the neighborhood.

When the Yankees lost to the Red Sox in the 2004 ALCS, it was painful and humiliating. But like New Yorkers after 9-11, the Yankees will surely arise from the ashes. After all, it’s a New York state of mind. And Sam, you old dog, I’ll be seeing you soon.

Check out my non-sports blog at http://1125pages.blogspot.com/. First one’s about my trip to Corregidor.

The Legend of Billy Ray Bates

In two weeks’ time, several Korean coaches will be coming over to the Philippines to personally scout the imports plying their wares in the ongoing Fiesta Conference Cup. The Korean Basketball League (KBL) will soon be returning to action.

Obviously we’ve come a long way that our neighbors know there’s quality hoops being played in this corner of Southeast Asia.

While we have some pretty good imports playing right now, gone are the days when these roundball mercs were larger than life figures whose prodigious presence and scoring feats could alter a team’s fortunes.

The world has caught up to the Americans in basketball and has knocked them down a peg or two. Even without our current predilection for Fil-foreigners, the quality of the Philippine game has gone up. All of a sudden we have locals who can match-up quite well with imports.

For their winning record and contributions, Norman Black, Bobby Parks, and Sean Chambers will arguably go down as the best three ever. But in terms of fewer conferences played, I’d give the nod to Billy Ray Bates. He played in four conferences and won three titles in his first three – the first two with Crispa and the last with Ginebra.

In his final conference, he teamed up with Kevin Gamble for four games before they were replaced (by Jumpin’ Joe War and Tommy Davis) as the crowd favorites tumbled to a mediocre record. Gamble’s being cut served him well for he soon worked himself to better basketball shape as he found himself playing for the Boston Celtics on a team that had their Big Three of LarryKevinRobert and eventually starting.

As for Bates, he soon wandered from Switzerland to Mexico and to the now-defunct World Basketball League. The man known as “Dunk” who thrilled Portland Trailblazer fans in the early 1980’s with his manic scoring sprees and aerial exploits slid into the depths of drugs and alcoholism.

When Portland made former Blazer Jerome Kersey its Director for Player Programs in 2005, a position designed to help rookies assimilate themselves into the NBA spotlight where fame and fortune have their pitfalls, Billy Ray Bates was used as a prime example of people who were totally unprepared for NBA life. For a man who should have served notice that dreams can come true when he made the regular line-up after being signed to a 10-day contract in 1980, his name, when mentioned is followed by a shake of the head and the words, “what a waste.”

In two memorable play-off seasons, Bates strapped to his back a Blazers team reeling from the loss of Bill Walton to various foot injuries to pace a team that still had Tom Owens, Ron Brewer, Maurice Lucas, Kermit Washington, and Jim Paxson. During the 1980 Western Conference first round battle with Seattle, Bates averaged 25 points per game against the Supersonics of the late Dennis Johnson, Jack Sikma, Gus Williams, Paul Silas, and Vinnie Johnson in his pre-Microwave days.

In first round action once more in 1981 against Kansas City, Dunk scored 28.3 in three outings against the Kings that had the high-scoring Otis Birdsong (who was here recently during the Bad Boy Tour), Scott Wedman (who parlayed his scoring days into a Boston Celtics contract years later), an aging UNC Tar Heel great Phil Ford, and later New York Knicks' GM Ernie Grunfeld.

Bates would play one more year in Portland before he was released for substance abuse. He would latch on to a pair of 10-day contracts in the 1982-83 season with the Washington Bullets and the Los Angeles Lakers before he would be out of the League permanently.

He would resurrect his career here in the Philippines with the famed Crispa Redmanizers and come back a couple of years later to team up with the high-scoring Michael Hackett to give Sonny Jaworski his first title as player-coach in the 1986 Open Conference.

Ginebra paced the league in that conference but found a tough foe in the Manila Beer squad that had Yoyoy Villamin, Abet Guidaben, and Atoy Co and imports Harold Keeling and former University of Houston Cougar and Phi Slamma Jamma alum Michael Young.

I remember during game one of the title series, all seemed lost for Ginebra as it seemed that Manila Beer had their number. But in the final minutes, a spirited rally by Ginebra saw them with a chance to pull out a win. And in the game’s final play, Billy Ray Bates hauled down Michael Young’s missed shot and went coast-to-coast with only Abet Guidaben standing in his path and an improbable victory. Bates, elevated and in his own words, “went for the moon to dunk over Guidaben” for a game-winning slam.

Ginebra would go on to win that series in five games and Bates proclaimed, “If you want to win a championship, who are you gonna call? Superman.”

But as ever, the kid from a poor farming community in Mississippi couldn’t handle the rewards of his tremendous basketball skills. He was plagued by demons in bottles and cocaine pipes. Bates would hit rock bottom when he robbed a Texaco gas station in Camden, New Jersey in 1998 and slashed the station attendant’s ear with a knife. He was caught by responding police not far from the incident and would be incarcerated in a New Jersey jail for seven years for stealing the princely sum of five dollars.

Bates was released last year and is said to now work as a janitor somewhere in the East Coast where he -- although now clean and sober -- still harbors dreams of rescuing his beloved Portland Trailblazers.

He went for the moon and came down with shattered dreams.

Thanks for the memories Billy Ray.

Our Survey Said

It’s time to play that famous game of Family Feud and feud is right. So let’s ask our friend Richard Dawson to lend us a hand here with the top answers on the board:

The Top 10 excuses for cheating in sports:
1. Everyone does it so why can’t we?
2. We didn’t know they were over-aged!
3. Goddamn alumni boosters!
4. We needed a championship to boost our image.
5. We need our alumni to give more money.
6. I wanted my younger brother’s team to advance to so I’ll throw a game.
7. Because our athletes are not too smart to go to class.
8. We bet a lot of money.
9. We thought we’d never get caught.
10. Winning is everything.

Why you shouldn’t rain on Kobe Bryant’s parade:
1. He’ll drop 60 points on your team.
2. He’ll buy his wife a diamond ring. Did you watch Blood Diamond?
3. You’ll be accused of instigating a witch hunt.
4. You’re probably in the minority. His #24 j is the number one selling jersey in the USA and China.
5. You’ll get a forearm shiver to your windpipe.

The top seven denials in sports:
1. It wasn’t rape. She consented to it.
2. I didn’t know it was drugs, man.
3. The media misquoted me. They took it out of context.
4. Damn referees.
5. It was the coach’s fault.
6. It was the player’s fault.
7. The better team lost.

Reasons why sports will never fully develop in the country:
1. Most sponsors would rather spend on the PBA, UAAP, or Manny Pacquiao.
2. The only inclination to sports by people who allocate money for sponsorship is running a treadmill or playing badminton.
3. We don’t have a strong grassroots program.
4. Like education, sports is not on our country’s radar.
5. Our sports officials are better equipped than the athletes.

Why Dennis Rodman will make the Hall of Fame before Ron Artest:
1. His teams – Detroit & Chicago – beat some pretty good teams: Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, and Utah. Ron Artest beat on fans at the Palace.
2. Dennis was the first to wear #91. Ron was second.
3. For all of Dennis’ distractions, the teams he played for got better (although the Admiral will dispute that). Ron’s teams spiraled out of control.
4. Dennis won five NBA titles, a bunch of rebounding titles, the Sixth Man of he Year Award with Detroit. Ron won a one-way ticket out of Indiana.

Most incredible Pinoy sports ironies:
1. Jojo Lastimosa who used to be so vocal about the proliferation of Fil-foreigners in the PBA was an assistant coach for Alaska at time when it was predominantly stacked with Fil-Ams (I think only two weren’t of foreign descent).
2. Sta. Lucia proclaiming themselves as wholly homegrown then drafting Alex Cabagnot and Kelly Williams in succession.
3. Our 1996 Olympic delegation featured six athletes including Onyok Velasco and Toni Leviste among others. The number of officials and tag-alongs was more than triple.
4. Every time we compete in an international sports event like the Asian Games there’s some issue about funding, lack of uniforms, lack of preparation, and then some politico calls for an investigation of which nothing ever comes out.

Why the old Ginebra San Miguel team of the Big J will kick the tail out of the current squad on any given day:
1. They were put together by spit, blood, and Jaworski pride (my ode to the late great Pinggoy Pengson).
2. They were never beaten badly by their foes. They had the Destroyer and the Big J to beat ‘em up, the Scholar to outwit ‘em, the original Dynamite and Mama, and the Magic Man.
3. They were the one true peoples’ team.
4. They had better imports: Billy Ray Bates, Michael Hackett, Jamie Waller, Jumpin’ Joe Ward, Wes Matthews, Carlos Briggs, and a guy named Jervin Cole.
5. They were the masters of the cardiac finish.

And on a non-sports note, my top reasons why I am not going to vote and why I am getting out of the country:
1. There’s no one to vote for.
2. What for when nothing has changed?
3. Balimbing is the National Fruit.
4. Where does my tax money go? To some politico who says that this road-widening project is a service of his office? To his re-election campaign?
5. No matter who wins, the other party will always say that they were cheated out of victory.

* * *
For a dear person:
God bless and rest the soul of the late PBA and NCAA Commissioner Jun Bernardino. He became a good friend over the last two years. Thanks for being a friend and a mentor of sorts. I’ll miss those long days of kwentuhan about sports. He was one of four people (including my editor Jun Lomibao, my boss Jude Turcuato, and my NCAA source) I sought for advice regarding the current PCU eligibility scandal before breaking it out in the open. Thanks so much for your advice, friendship, and support. See ya in the Big Stadium in the Sky.

The Boo-tiful Game

Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s President likes to talk about the healing power of football. Joga bonito, as it is nicknamed. The beautiful game. But whether a reflection of the times, football -- the world game -- has become increasingly violent.

In the other day’s elimination match between Valencia and Inter Milan, a melee broke out after full time; one that went on for more than five minutes and spilled all the way to the locker room. In the knockout match between Olympique Lyonaisse and AS Roma, the French team’s Brazilian forward Fred threw a nasty elbow at the Italian team’s defender Cristian Chivu that opened up his nose like a spigot. The television analyst spent an annoying several minutes muttering what coward Fred was for his actions.

What makes football such a passionate game is how it is a reflection of life and the battle for turf. To score a goal is a difficult enough task that is why when the ball meets the back of the net, the celebration is rapturous and filled with emotion. By the same token, one of life’s basic tenets is life is unfair and difficult so even the tiniest of victories or good fortune is enough cause for celebration.

Pitched battles
The FIFA World Cup is one of the most intensely viewed and followed sporting spectacles; more so than the Olympics that tends to feature sports that are either slanted towards certain countries or are just plain unwatchable. On the pitch, no one is any one favorite. Even the best of the best, the Boys from Brasil can get upset on any given day. When it comes to national teams, it’s war. Literally.

The Soccer War, as the six-day battle between neighboring Honduras and El Salvador was known, had long term repercussions not just for the countries that butted heads but also for the whole region. Both Honduras and El Salvador already had strained relations owing to immigration and political unrest. After their national teams scored a win apiece against each other, they faced each other in a tiebreaker in Mexico to go to the 1970 World Cup. On June 27, 1969, El Salvador nipped Honduras 3-2 in extra time to advance. By the game’s end, there was rioting in the stands between followers of both teams. The melee degenerated into a full-scale shooting war when the Salvadoran Army invaded two weeks later. A ceasefire was put in effect but not until there were some 2,000 dead on each side. The war suspended the Central American Common Market, the equivalent of the European Economic Union and succeeding military junta rule in El Salvador drove the country to a civil war.

In May of 1990, Red Star Belgrade, already the winner of the Yugoslav football league by aggregate score, traveled to Maksimir Stadium in Zagreb, Croatia to play a meaningless final match against host team Dinamo Zagreb.

Prior to the match, there were street skirmishes between supporters of the two clubs. And right before kick-off, Serbian fans of Red Star Belgrade provoked the Croatian crowd with nationalist slogans such as “Zagreb is Serbian” and “Death to Tudjman,” reference to the newly elected pro-independence President of Croatia. When the Serbs began to destroy the stadium and throw rocks at the Croats, a fight ensued. Unfortunately for the home side, the Serb-controlled Yugoslav police didn’t lift a finger to prevent the Red Star hooligans from instigating the violence. When the Red Star fans began attacking with knives, it became too much for the Croats to swallow so they began to fight back. Only then did the police intervene but to everyone’s horror, they went to break up the Croats.

The Croats assaulted the police and then took back the stands from the Serbs in a battle that lasted for over an hour. Dinamo’s Zvonimir Boban who would captain Croatia’s World Cup side in France in 1998, became a folk hero when he kicked a policeman who was beating a fallen Dinamo fan. Boban became an icon in the struggle for independence.

The game was never played but it would go down in history as the start of the Great Patriotic War that saw the disintegration of the Balkan country of Yugoslavia.

As former England captain Terry Butcher once said, “Off the pitch, I was always a mild-mannered ordinary bloke, but put me in a football shirt, it was tin hats and fixed bayonets. Death or glory.”

A red card for racism
Football is said to be a sport without borders, but in Europe that is supposedly more tolerant of racial mingling, there has been a rise in a number of incidents that have people wondering about the state of the game.

In match between Barcelona and Real Zaragoza at La Romareda in Zaragoza, the home side’s fans started money grunts to spite Barca’s Cameroonian forward Samuel Eto’o. As Eto’o threatened to walk off the pitch Zaragoza goalkeeper Cesar Sanchez angrily gestured to the crowd that his side also had black players.

In 2004, Luis Aragones, the coach of the Spanish National Team was filmed by a television crew trying to motivate striker Jose Antonio Reyes by making racist remarks about Reyes’ Arsenal teammate, Thierry Henry. Aragones said, “Show that black little shit that you are better than him.” The English media strongly protested Aragones’ words and actions, but instead Spanish officials were notoriously slow in denouncing the remarks. In a friendly match between Spain and England at the Santiago Bernabeau Stadium, Spanish fans taunted England’s black players particularly Ashley Cole and Shaun Wright-Philips every time they touched the ball. UEFA heavily fined the Spanish Football Federation and warned them that any further incidents will result in the suspension of international play on Spanish soil.

Lord Herman Ouseley is the chairman for Kick It Out, a campaign against racism in football. He has been working hard to get more Asians and blacks on European teams and to speak out against racism along with white football players. “It’s a long-term project in tackling racism in football. The way of tackling racism in football is about long-term educational work - with fan groups at the local level, with the organizations that represent the game and then getting all the groups to work together. We have worked hardest with the fan groups, I suppose. But we recognize the need for educational work at all levels of the game - working say with security staff, having plans in place to ban racists from grounds, making sure that those found guilty are fined. It means working with everyone from fans and officials to the players themselves. Some players, for example Ryan Giggs, go into schools on a regular basis to discuss issues of racism.”

Game, set, and match… for football
Prior to the start of the 2006 World Cup, Italians woke up to find out that their much-beloved Serie A was embroiled in one of the worst game fixing scandals in sports history. Top teams like Juventus, AC Milan, Lazio, and Fiorentina were found to have conspired to have favorable referees officiating their matches and rigging results. Juventus was not only stripped of its league titles from 2005 &06, but it was relegated to second division play and kicked out of UEFA play.

Incidentally, this wasn’t the first time Italy’s premier league was rocked by a game fixing scandal. The most recent was in 1980 when AC Milan and Lazio conspired to fix a game.
The scandal left widespread feelings of guilt and anger towards the owners, managers, players, referees, and league officials. Said one Italian football fan, “I don’t think I can ever watch another Serie A game again knowing that if something fishy is taking place.”

The relegation of Juventus, AC Milan inability to recover from its points reduction, the flight of many of the league’s top players to Spain, the stigma of the game fixing scandal, and most recently the suspension of games following the death of an Italian policeman during the rioting that took place during a derby between Palermo and Catania, have given a black eye to Italian football and placed their bid to host the Euro Championships in 2012 in jeopardy.

Attendance, particularly among family ticket holders, has dipped significantly that for the first time, the Bundesliga is actually drawing more fans.

In late September 2005, 11 Brasilian National Championship matches and as well as four second division derbies were ordered to be replayed in their entirety after two referees were caught fixing matches due to outside betting. Of the eleven replayed games, only two finished with their original outcome.

The price of losing
Prior to the liberation of Iraq from the yoke of Saddam Hussein, the country’s national sporting scene and football’s in particular was the personal playground of the dictator’s cruel and sadistic son, Uday. When the national team would lose, he would force players under gunpoint to kick concrete walls while barefoot until their feet were bloodied stumps. At times, he would throw them in solitary confinement and have them beaten with paddles. Sharar Haydar, a defender on the national team, was gaoled for a week after Iraq lost 2-nil to Jordan. Along with three other teammates, Haydar’s feet were beaten 20 times a day and was only fed with one glass of water and a slice of bread. Haydar fled the country in 1998.

In 2000, General Robert Guei, the leader of Ivory Coast’s ruling military junta, threw the entire football team into the brig for two full days after crashing out of the first round of the African Nations Cup. Guei took their mobile phones, wallets, passports, and publicly castigated them: “You should have spared us the shame!”
A great equalizer and a great hope
But it’s not all hate and the strife. There’s a reason why football is the global game and it is said to bring people together.

Football perhaps more than any other sport is life’s great equalizer. A goal can transcend generations and live on forever such as Diego Maradona’s weave through six England players en route to his second tally of the game during the
1986 World Cup in Mexico.

And any talk of the sport or even its greatest players will always have Edson Arantes do Nascimento or Pele to the world at large thrown into the picture.

Not bad for a pair of boys who born to extreme poverty. Their exploits have helped forge national identity and have given hope to many others to find their fame and fortune in a ball with a circumference of 28 inches and is filled with a network of pentagons and hexagons.

In war-ravaged Afghanistan, women long repressed by the deposed Taliban regime, have found a voice by now playing football.

In the Ivory Coast, the exploits of the Elephants – as the team is known -- on the pitch has done something the politicians cannot do: force people to lay down their arms and seek an end to the civil war that has wracked the country no end. The team, as led by Chelsea’s star striker Didier Drogba, has been a symbol of unity for this African country’s fractured peoples.

This former French colony’s military government has repressed its migrant population (that comes from neighboring Liberia, Ghana, and Guinea) and Muslim community that have caused much of the discontent in the country. But many of the team’s better players are from these oppressed minorities. So watching this team make quite a splash in the last World Cup united this West African country of 18 million people.

And for all the bad, there’s quite a silver lining in the horizon. The 2002 World Cup held jointly in Korea and Japan is a milestone in itself. The fact that Korea finally allowed a Japanese team onto its shores is a good sign for better relations between the two countries. Obviously, many haven’t forgiven Japan for its World War II atrocities. But still it does give one plenty of hope.

And who knows, maybe a few years from now, we just might see the World cup jointly hosted by Israel and Palestine. It could happen, you know.

The Kobe Rules

The worm has turned for Kobe Bryant. Far removed from his boy wonder days, he has become a perplexing basketball enigma. Now that’s an oxymoron if there was ever one.

Kobe Rule #1 Stats the Thing
Consider this: as a rookie, then-Lakers’ coach Del Harris in a game against the San Antonio Spurs, asked his precocious rookie to take a possible game winner. The rookie from Lower Merion High who was taken by the Lakers from the Charlotte Hornets in exchange for Vlade Divac threw up an airball as time expired leaving him beside himself. But Chick Hearn, the voice of the Lakers, gently encouraged Bryant and warned that he’d be taking many more of those shots – and making them – for years to come. Hearn never realized what an understatement that was. During the Purple Reign over the NBA in the early 2000s, Bryant was literally tugging on Superman’s --- Michael Jordan’s cape. The fact that he was the only player outside Jordan’s teammates in the Bulls to be mentioned prominently in his photo-autobiography For the Love of the Game shows what the King thought of Bryant’s and his potential. Under the tutelage of Jordan’s former coach in Chicago, Phil Jackson, Bryant soon developed into a nasty big time game scorer and closer not seen since His Airness abdicated from the throne.

Together with the Big Aristotle, they won three straight titles in LA. Showtime was back and so was Jack in his customary courtside seat. Not that he left, but he would made treks outside Forum in Inglewood and to the United Center to watch one of the greatest NBA dynasties unfold in those formative internationalist years of the NBA.

Somewhere along the way, Bryant’s mad skills and assassin’s heart gave way to more disparaging portraits of the man: petulant, self-centered, and maybe even worse, a second-rate Michael Jordan. The Washington Times called him the League’s #1 villain supplanting RashWEED Wallace. All of a sudden, it’s only Nike that has him for an endorser.

He feuded with his dad, Jellybean Bryant, made enemies of a very unforgiving Philadelphia crowd after he said he’d cut out the hearts of Philadelphians everywhere when they met during the 2001 NBA Finals, and authored the break-up of the Lakers’ new millennium dynasty. There’s Eagle County, Colorado where Kobe will probably never get an All-star vote and there’s the last All-Star Game in Las Vegas where he engaged LeBron James in a shoot-out with an eye for the MVP Award much to his detractors’ chagrin.

After the Manu Ginobili, Mike Miller, and Kyle Korver incidents where he fouled them rather hard, word is the League is watching Bryant even more closely and any further allegedly flagrant fouls of this kind will mean multiple game suspensions.

Kobe Rule #2 Be the Best You Can Be
And after a recent loss to the Washington Wizards on the road, Bryant angrily confronted teammate Lamar Odom over a questionable decision in the game’s dying seconds. Guess that’s what losing does. After a game against the Seattle Supersonics, Bryant blocked Sonics counterpart Ray Allen’s lay-up attempt. Instead of picking up the loose ball, Bryant stared down Allen – a personal showdown between the two 1996 draftees. Looking the gift horse in the mouth, Sonics’ guard Luke Ridenour feed the rock to Rashard Lewis for a big time slam. "He thinks -- in his mind -- that he's going to shoot and try to show me up at any point in time on the floor," Allen said. "But his mentality and mine are different. I've got to do what it takes to help the team win."

Michael Jordan casts a very long shadow on the NBA. Clearly the League has moved on, but just as people used to compare hoops feats as Chamberlain-like, they’re now Jordanesque. Didn’t he get the loudest ovation during the All-Star Weekend?

Of course it’s rather unfair to make Bryant and aphorism given that his in the middle of his NBA career and for all his prodigious scoring skills, he has become basketball’s version of Mike Tyson – he plays with a chip on his shoulder and with angst worthy of Kurt Cobain.

Kobe Bryant for all his self-proclamations that he isn’t the latest of a long line of Jordanairres doesn’t help with his actions.

From the pumped fist, to the number changes… yes, the number changes.
- MJ wore #9 with the Dream Team. Kobe’s number in the US National Team is … #10.
- MJ wore #23 forever linking his name with the number (sorry Jim Carrey but your new movie sucks). Kobe now wears #24.
I wonder does this mean that he’s always going to be one step behind MJ?

It seems that Kobe Bryant is battling for more than a win on the court, he’s battling for respect. He is clearly yearning for those halcyon days when he ran with Nick the Quick, Speedy Eddie, and the Big Diesel. Before he began to embrace the Dark Side of the Force.

I’m a fan of Bryant the basketball player not the man. I wish he’d take the time off to reflect on his place in the hoops firmament and do what’s best for him, the team, and the League. Because if not, the Kobe Rules might be interpreted this way:
- You may have three titles, but you’ll never win six like MJ
- You may score 81 points (and 65 against the Trailblazers two days ago), but you’ll never win 10 scoring titles
- You may have Phil Jackson as your coach but you’ll never have him bat for you for all his “witch hunt” musings
- You may have been an All-Defensive Player but those flailing arms will bring you more suspensions.