Rafe Bartholomew
Appearances
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
It was her name. The main character's name, it is an extremely offensive premise for a soap opera about a woman who, by local beauty standards, is not attractive and resolves to improve her lot in life and have rich kids by finding foreign men. Such as Brad. Unfortunately, yeah. I was Brad, the almost prototypical ugly American. Do you remember any of your lines? Get away from me with this baby.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
The entire league is based in Manila in the capital. and the teams are owned by the owners of San Miguel Beer, or we're looking at the Crispa Redmanizers. Crispa was a t-shirt company, a textile company, and Redmanizing was this word they had come up with for basically making non-shrink t-shirts. So we're the CRISPA non-shrink t-shirt champions. I mean, and so many names like this.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Right. And the owner of Pure Foods at the time probably liked that every time you went to the supermarket or went to the Sorry Sorry store, you would see Pure Foods, the tender, juicy hot dogs you saw last night, you know, with Alvin Patrimonio dropping 30 on beautiful little turnarounds in the lane is now, I'll take the Pure Foods, right? That bright red hot dog.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
With the gray insides, it's nothing better. Their history of the names in the Pure Foods franchise is great because they would change it every few years to sell a different product. They were, at one point in time, the Carne Norte Corned Beef Cowboys.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
And I don't need to tell you this, but some of your listeners might like to know as well. Philippine culture is very, very swagged out and stylish and free-flowing. And there's an improvisational and performative nature that you can sort of track through great performers, great singers, great through pop culture, but also in basketball.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Basically, there are styles that are completely unique to the country and to individual players, shots and moves that you don't see anywhere else and that are kind of mind-blowing for American basketball players and fans to see because it's like we kind of walk in thinking we invented this or it was invented in our country. We know everything. You can't teach us anything about this game.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Then you see guys doing things you couldn't imagine ever doing.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
So my personal favorite, partly because of the nickname, partly because of the way that he could really, some of his finishes still blow my mind. Vergel Meneses. The Aerial Voyager played for the Swift Mighty Meatys at points in time in his career, as well as the Sunkissed Soda team. He was one of these players that could just, he really did float.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
And watch the Aerial Voyager go. He is up, up, and he is gone.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
He would get up there and figure out what to do later because he could.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
And the Skywalker on the attack on the right side challenges to defend.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Sam Boy Lim, may he rest in peace. He was a hero in a famous 1985 game against a version of the United States. This was not the senior United States team. Right. But this was in a regional tournament, and it was the only time the Philippines has a win like that over any Team USA. And this was not—these were good. Jay Billis was on that team. Eat it, Jay. And then the other—sort of the next—
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
version of these acrobatic finishers the league produced was Bong Alvarez. who is known as Mr. Excitement. Mr. Excitement. Probably dunked better than the other guys, at least in his highlights. Scored 71 points in a game. Yeah, excitement may have been an understatement, actually. He was playing for a very wholesome, branded team owned by the Alaska Milk Company.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
But this is a milk brand that cared a lot about a family image, and Mr. Excitement, he got shot in the butt outside of a massage parlor in Manila early in the morning. A hoomst among us. Yeah, and it was time. Certainly, Brad from Bohekang has done worse. But Alaska decided to part ways with him and actually made a trade that helped them become the dynasty team of the 1990s.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
I will kill you.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
The PBA has felt their fans becoming less engaged over time. The league doesn't attract as many fans to PBA arenas as they used to, and that may not be the league's fault. The PBA in the 70s and 80s, really all the way into the early 2000s, was such a prime mover in Philippine football.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
pop culture and entertainment basketball players were as famous as the most famous singers and actors and not only were they as famous as politicians in some cases they went on to become the politicians and to lose that status even if the PBA's business is in many ways pretty healthy right I mean first of all
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
The team owners mostly care about marketing their product and having it on TV and now on YouTube and on the internet. And that goal is still achieved. But to feel your status sort of drip away leads them to taking some dramatic measures, looking for that shot in the ass.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
So it really starts at last year's PBA All-Star game, where just for fun, hey, let's put this 27-foot four-point line out there.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
And maybe the guys will have fun with it, and they did. Four-point play! That game ended up with a guard hitting two four-point shots and one of them with a foul to send the game into overtime, and then they won it.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
And that ending, I think, put a little seed in the league's head where they thought, well, if this worked in our All-Star game, why don't we just roll it out for the regular season?
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Well, the PBA indeed has its own competition committee. What they didn't do was consult them in this case before the PBA Board of Governors happened to come back and say, by the way, we have a four-point shot now. We loved it at the All-Star Game. We want the game to be as exciting as possible. So congrats, guys. Have fun with this four-point shot.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
I was speaking... I was ugly American. I was speaking English. Oh, you weren't even... They didn't even use your superpower. Well, back then, it wasn't that super. After a year, I was okay, but still learning, still studying. But, like, that was a thing. So my dad visited about a week after my episode where I slapped the lead character came out. Oh, my God. I love this.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
That's where the PBA's galaxy brain kicks in. What if we don't ask the coaches? They can't go crazy if we don't ask them. And so the coaches of the league were not consulted before the Board of Governors announced announced that there would be a four-point shot.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
And so the coaches actually had three weeks to adjust to a new four-point line 27 feet from the rim with their teams that was just going to be painted on the floor at PBA games.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
So over those first few months, teams attempted 5.8 fours per game. So it's slow.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
It's maybe one of the first times I've ever thought about describing an aspect of Philippine basketball with the word restraint. And so I spoke with one of the most accomplished coaches in the Philippines period, Chot Reyes, who is the head coach of the talk and text Tropang Giga in the PBA, but has coached in the league as a head coach since 1993.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Actually, we just discussed it today as the coaching staff. And Chot said you have to guard that four-point line and you have to do it either without fouling or fouling before the guy gets the shot off. And that's actually the way that Chot wound up losing one game.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
And that was one of his two four-point game winners so far.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
27 feet, I think, is definitely a little too close for the NBA or NBA caliber players like Scotty Hobson is right on the fringe of being. And there are lots of players like that out there in the international basketball world. There are too many players in the NBA who could make this shot pretty easily. And there are players, I mean, Steph Curry, Dame Lillard, they're easy to think of.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Absolutely. And players like Steph, Dame, Trey Young have actually had full seasons in their career when their average made three came from beyond 27 feet. Oh, Caitlin Clark had hit this, by the way. Her average made three is like 28 something. They're players who it's not, they're not looking to shoot it from that distance. But if you put a line there.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
And children were running up to me and him in the street and being like... You are the husband of... And, like... Why did you slap her? You're so mean. And my dad is like, why do all these people know you? Who are you here? So he came at an opportune time to witness it.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Sure. So since the very beginning of the league, all 50 years ago, PBA teams have traditionally hired one foreign reinforcement player to beef up the local lineups, to add flavor to the game, to bring sort of that American style that, especially if you think back to the early days of the PBA, they couldn't just pop on TV and watch great American athletes.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
So they did the next best thing, send someone back to the States, find the best players they could, the best players outside of the NBA, and pay them to come play for the PBA.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
They wanted the Goldilocks amount of foreign star. And that, at least in the PBA, turns out to be one player. And they also think about a Goldilocks level of height. Just how tall should... Because it is a shorter league, right?
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
The traditional height limit for an import is 6'6". And so they hire players, and the first thing that they have to do is pass the height test. They measure them every time. You get off the plane.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Up to the 90s, the league measured imports standing up. But what they found was that there are too many ways to game that system. Players would try to lean a little bit just to get an extra inch off, or they would bend their knees a little bit. And even though, and there are pictures of this, they would have team and league officials pressing on their knees to try and straighten them out.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Incredible. The players would just hold tight, lock them up and say, no, this is how I stand.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
And so the league's response to this was to move to a system in which they measure player imports' heights laying down. So you have to go to the league office and lay down there for them. And so I'm curious, what do the imports then think of the four-point line? Most of them didn't know that the league was going to have a four-point line when they first got hired.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
But the traditional role of imports on PBA teams is to be the leading scorer. Get your points, get 30, get 40. So the imports who are expected to do the most scoring are also the players who have the brightest green light to put up that shot. And they're also some of the ones who've been the most aggressive in taking it so far.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Played college ball at Colorado. He played there with Derek White. Made it to the league on a couple of 10-day contracts. And again, later in his career with the Dallas Mavericks, been in the G League, played in Germany, Poland, Israel.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
So in George's case, he was coming off an injury and had been rehabbing and... I didn't have, you know, any real offers in Europe or anywhere like that.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Because the team that hired him started the season with another player who was not scoring as much as they needed him to. And... Then they reached out, you know, they looked around. They actually wanted another player who shares the same agent as George. And that player wound up going to play in another country. And so the agents reached out to the team and said, well, we do have George King.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
He's 6'6". He fits the mold. He can shoot.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
And after he goes through that, he's able to go to his first practice and suit up for this team called the Blackwater Bossing.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Blackwater in the Philippines is the name of a men's cosmetics company. And Blackwater specifically is, it's like Axe body spray. It's a cologne. And bossing basically means boss. So welcome, George King, to the Blackwater bossing. You are the bossing of bossings now.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Well, he didn't even know that it was part of the league when they hired him or when he arrived in Manila or even, to tell you the truth, when he went to his first couple of practices with his team because that team, which rents its gym space for practice, is not allowed to put a four-point line on the practice floors.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
So George King doesn't really find out that he's going to have this potent weapon until he gets to the arena for his first game and finds out it's right there. My team, no one knew who I was.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
I mean, thank you. I love talking about this. It is, for 20 years, kind of the subject that has most animated me. I've never gotten tired of it, never gotten sick of it, never wanted to move on from it. So any chance I get.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
And it, you hear him talking about it. It's like he discovered the superpower that he had, that no one else was either ballsy enough to do or good enough to do at the same rate that he could.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
He is all in on this shot. He attempted more fours than threes. And once he realized, once it was unlocked for him, he started looking for it. He wanted to step back and shoot fours. He wanted to shoot them as a trailer. But let's talk about that statistic nerd thing for a second here. 40% from four, Is 80% on twos. You hear in the NBA, 50, 40, 90.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
What would it be in the PBA with the four-point shot? It sounds crazy. Shooting 25% on four-pointers.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
If he's doing that at 40%, then yeah, keep shooting them. Why are you only shooting six, George? And as the games went on, he had a few nights where he attempted 12 and 13 fours. Like he's always in the 30s, which means, again, double it for twos.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
He became proof of concept for what the PVA is hoping the four-point line could do for the league because all of a sudden people are like, hey, have you seen this guy making four-pointers, taking them left and right, has this celebration, he's leading them to wins. And it ended up being a sign of what the four-pointer could do if people embrace it and shoot it well.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Right. So he led Blackwater to this place where they almost made the playoffs and they wound up losing the second to last game of the season, which eliminated them officially from the postseason. So on one hand, he is he's a professional like these, especially overseas pros. They make business decisions.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
And before his final game in that season, he had this moment where he's thinking, should I bother playing this game? We're not going to make the playoffs either way. It doesn't matter if we win or lose. Should I just save my body? And maybe because of the four-point shot, maybe because of the connection, he felt like he was developing with Philippine basketball and the PBA.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
For whatever reason, he's looking in the mirror.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
And at the end of the season in which George King managed to brand himself as the PVA's first four-point king, complete with a crown celebration, he made his last shot in a 64-point performance on a falling-away four-pointer going towards the baseline.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
They gave him a pen and a piece of paper and said, write down 64 on it, and then had him pose like Wilt Chamberlain after he scored 100 points in the NBA.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
He will need to be naturalized as a Philippine citizen for that to happen.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Well, that's their loss.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
I first moved to Manila when I was 23 years old in 2005. I have no idea who I would be today if that never happened. If I never spent those first few years living there, studying the history of basketball, playing with everyone who would pass me a ball. I am who I am because of that experience.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Salamat din sayo.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
The way that I think most people, if they happen to visit the country, encounter first when they get off the plane, they're riding in a cab or whatever. They see people playing basketball everywhere in the streets. People dressed in basketball jerseys as almost the standard wear for any man walking around casually on the street. Yes.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
but you see people playing in these really quite nice covered courts municipal courts that are put up by local governments where they have nice backboards full courts people playing in bare feet in flip-flops as much as sneakers are a key part of basketball culture you go to the philippines you don't need some things to be a thriving basketball nirvana which is to say that when it comes to the philippine basketball association
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
I can bang out some incredible renditions of Parokia and the Edgar songs on karaoke machines with T-Mac and Kobe highlights playing behind the words. How do you watch the PBA? Now there's actually, you can just pay for it. Pilipinas Live is the app, but I still have to wake up on the East Coast five in the morning. You've been watching these live? Usually.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Nothing gets me out of bed in the morning like a four-point shot.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
That might be a slogan for the league.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
What is it? A 1977 yearbook put together by the CRISPA Redmanizers, which is one of the true legacy teams of the PBA. They're like the Boston Celtics of that era. They won many of the first championships over the first few years of the league. And... I found it in a changge, a flea market in Manila, and it was worth every single peso.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
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Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
I think he's used to it now. He was pretty surprised. He came over early, end of 2006, so after I'd been there for a year. And he got a huge kick out of it because he just was like, what is going on here?
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Well, it's 1977. It is long hair, great mustaches, 70s disco. And the PBA was that in that time.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
The PBA was that level of flash. Basketball, entertainment, and politics, they all sort of mix in this sometimes dangerous, incestuous way, but also extremely. in an extremely glamorous way, especially then when the PPA was probably at the height of its popularity. And it is really just this beautiful time capsule to flip through, like the team owner sitting there with a giant bottle of beer.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Mami, Crispa.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Wait, who is this woman? She was the leader of the Crispanatics, the fan group that went not only to every game for this team, but to practices. I mean, this is one of the really endearing and beautiful things about the PBA and Philippine basketball, where it's a professional league that also has this really personal touch. Players know their fans. They know them.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
people would come and bring spaghetti and pancit noodles for players on their birthdays. And then players would give their fans gifts on their birthdays. It's this really, there's this closeness that still exists to this day between players and fans in the PBA that is, you'll never see anything like it in the NBA. And it's really, it's beautiful.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
I mean, it is a story of American colonialism at the beginning. The United States bought the Philippines as a prize after winning the Spanish-American War. The people of the Philippines did not immediately accept that, and they fought another war of basically conquest that the Americans eventually won, a brutal war of attrition, truly ugly history.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Yeah.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Then from 1902 until the beginning of World War II, America administered the Philippines as a colonial territory. there was an American governor of the Philippines. Many of the streets in Metro Manila and around the country, you will notice, are still named after people like McKinley, which may or may not be the name of a mountain these days. I don't even know.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
He loved that. But I had just been on a telenovela after a terrible role.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Yes. So if you think about this, the first half of the 20th century, the United States is coming in after Spain running the Philippines.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
The American government... decided we're going to be different by being the soft, gentle colonialists. We're still going to take all the wealth out of the country, but we're the good guys. The basketball side of this story is that the colonial government viewed sports as part of this civilizing mission. So the Philippines wound up getting a very early head start in basketball.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Basketball invented in 1891 by James Naismith in Springfield, Massachusetts. It arrives in the Philippine public education curriculum in 1912. Filipinos wound up learning how to play basketball sort of before the rest of the world, other than the United States, maybe Canada.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
There was this early culture and real skill and ability in the sport that didn't exist in countries that have since risen and because of greater height, greater wealth, kind of... left over the Philippines in terms of international basketball status.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
I agree, unfortunately. But unsurprisingly. So the first Olympics to feature basketball as an event in 1936, the Philippines only lost one game in that to the United States. And due to the weird way they structured the tournament at that time, they lost right before the medal round. But they'd beaten Mexico, which won the bronze. There's always this sense that, man, we could have had a bronze.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
I was Brad, the illegitimate father of... an important character in a show that came out in 2007.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
And then later on in 1954, the Philippines actually did go on to win a bronze at the World Championships in Brazil. They're still the only East Asian country to medal at that level in international competition in basketball. And it all builds this real pride and history in the Philippines. People grow up and are raised with this knowledge that basketball is your sport.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Even in the 70s, Filipino fans are aware of the NBA, but they consume it through magazines. They hear of it secondhand. Maybe a game will make it onto TV on tape delay a week after it was played. And that's part of the reason that the Philippines decided, the founders of the PBA got together and said, let's make the leap and play.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
create the first all-professional league after the NBA, so we have our own. And the PBA was that, a way to plant the Philippines flag in the sport and say, we are a great basketball nation too.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Ba Ke Kang.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
San Miguel Beermen, one of the legacy teams that is still around from that era and plays today. A name like the Beermen tips off the way that the PBA was organized as a business, which is a marketing vehicle for many of the biggest companies in the country. They, instead of having teams based in different parts of the country, it was a way also to save a little bit of money on travel.