Fallout from Qatar loss
AFTER Gilas Pilipinas lost to unheralded Qatar last Friday at the 17th Asian Games, many Filipinos envisioned the loss as a signal of the eventual exit of the Philippine team from medal contention.
If we had lost to a team which everyone expected us to beat, many dread the result when we face host South Korea. As it turned out, the Filipinos lost again.
“Gilas looked tired,” Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas (SBP) vice chair Ricky Vargas, who is supposed to fly to Incheon early next week, texted. It was easy to perceive that he was very disappointed and depressed, although he wasn’t saying it.
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The loss could only be blamed on one person, I told Vargas, who waited intently for the next line. I told him Moying Martelino is to be blamed.
It was supposed to be a joke. Back in 1989, Martelino was pirated by the Qatar Basketball Federation (QBF) from the then Basketball Association of the Philippines (now SBP) so he could help organize the association internally and raise the stature of the Arab country in the Asian basketball map.
I told Ricky it was Martelino who taught the Qataris how to play basketball and now they’re beating us in our own game.
Of course I was only trying to console him with my corny joke. I know he was trying hard to analyze what went wrong, considering that perhaps even the Qataris didn’t expect to beat us. Gilas Pilipinas was heavily favored to win and this was confirmed by a Doha-based colleague.
“I didn’t give the Gilas-Qatar match much thought, because I was sure the Filipinos would win,” my colleague said.
“To start with, the Greek coach is new. He was hired only last April and only had the chance to get to know his players and practice with them in earnest last July. The Qatar national team practically only had a month to prepare for the Asian Games.”
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And who is Boney Watson, the naturalized American who wreaked havoc on Gilas? How come we never saw him before? Was his eligibility not questioned by the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA)?
My colleague said “every naturalized player is questioned by the OCA. Remember, even a player from the host country was disqualified. Contrary to what most of us think, we were not being discriminated against when Andray Blatche was disqualified.”
We have not seen Watson play, he said, because he plays mostly in Gulf competitions.
“The QBF was choosing between him and Jeffrey Hayes for the Fiba Asia in Manila last year, but the officials decided on Hayes. Watson has been residing in Qatar for seven years now, and he’s not exactly young. He’s in his mid-30s,” said our source.
Just as Vargas and our countrymen feared, the loss to Qatar seemed to have sparked our fall. As in most of our games even in the Fiba World Cup, we almost made it against South Korea yesterday even if we played All-Filipino, but again, we collapsed in the dying minutes. It’s not very clear in my mind if Gilas still has a chance—no matter how small—to advance to the next phase of the competition.
My colleague said we should not be surprised if the more fortunate Qataris make it.
