Pablo Torre Finds Out
Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana
Tue, 25 Feb 2025
It is a far-fetched innovation floated by American hoops heads for years: the four-point shot. But as our far-flung correspondent Rafe Bartholomew reports, there is a real-life pilot program afoot — half a world away, in a galaxy-brained league with a half-century's worth of swag: the Philippine Basketball Association. And it's working. We meet the new king of long distance; watch film with a Filipino coaching legend; and then heat-check this cultural exchange with the NBA's preeminent philosopher of the four-pointer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the radical basketball experiment discussed?
With the Galaxy Watch 7 or the Galaxy Ring and the Samsung Health app.
What does your dad think of your expertise in Philippine basketball?
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?
Well, he played ball.
Yeah.
So, like, that part, I think he understood.
He loved that. But I had just been on a telenovela after a terrible role.
We have to explain the fact that you are, in fact, a soap... You're a soap opera star, Rafe.
I was Brad, the illegitimate father of... an important character in a show that came out in 2007.
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Chapter 2: How did the four-point shot come to be?
You bet. Bro, literally, you go onto this table, you lay down, there's one guy that's holding your foot there, there's another guy, and I have my hair like this, who's like pushing my hair down to see, like, you know what I mean, make sure I'm, you know, so... That's how they do it, bro. And they serious about it. They're serious. It's like a boxing weigh-in.
From the time I left my home to the time I landed in Manila, 32 hours, and you go straight to this daggone table. They stretch you. And if you're like off by a quarter, a quarter of an inch, you're back on a plane the other way, back home. And they're flying in the next guy.
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.
And I just have to clarify that this is not the military defense contractor.
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.
But the biggest weapon in his arsenal now as a member of this team is the four-pointer. And so how excited is he to, yeah, run and gun with this?
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.
No, our practice court doesn't have it. Like, with this right here, bro, I keep this with me all the time. That painter's tape. So I try to tape it down in our spot and... the security guard, they was like, nah, yeah. My coach was like, yeah, yeah, they're not going to let you do that. And I was like, okay, I believe you. And then sure enough, they came and took it up. I'm like, you mother...
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.
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