NBA spotlight falls on Paul, Howard on Yuletide day

SACRAMENTO—“Yippee, we have a season,” Cathy G. exclaimed. She is the big chief’s executive assistant whose office is close to mine.
Cathy jokes with me a lot. “You just can’t let go of this place, you keep turning up,” she would tease me each time I get the call to work for a few months as a retired annuitant at the public information unit of the California governor’s energy commission.
The giddy Ms. G’s definition of season goes beyond the holidays. After all, she is a loyal Sacramento Kings season ticket holder and a patient partisan of the National Basketball Association.
By season, Cathy meant the NBA’s—once on the precipice of cancellation in the midst of a 161-day lockout.
But the league has been reborn. So NBA followers around the world rejoice!
To spread good tidings to you, worldwide fans—waiting with bated breath like Cathy—the league will unwrap a five-game Christmas Day package this Sunday (Monday in the Philippines).
A star-studded cast will try to restore the NBA’s radiance from Antigua to Zimbabwe, from Tashkent to Timbuktu.
Among the only games of the opening week will be the matchup between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Chicago Bulls; a rematch of the 2011 NBA Finals between the Dallas Mavericks and the Miami Heat, mentored by Fil-American coach Erik Spoelstra; and a faceoff between the Boston Celtics and the New York Knicks.
I’m quite sure the cable providers in the Philippines will serve the whole plate to whet the appetite of local fans.
But the games most likely to attract attention this early are those pitting the Los Angeles Clippers and the Golden State Warriors, and the Oklahoma Thunder and the Orlando Magic.
Chris Paul, formerly of the New Orleans Hornets, almost got traded to the Lakers, but intervention by the league, since it owns the Hornets, sent him to the Clippers instead. Chris, a four-time All Star, still gets to play in a bigger market, but in the shadow of the team he coveted.
Meanwhile, the Hornets, without Paul, will lose more of their fan base, an issue NBA Commissioner David Stern, who called the shots in the Paul trade, has to face.
The Magic will square off with the Thunder and the focus here will be on Orlando’s Dwight Howard.
The restless Howard, a.k.a. Superman, has not told his team what he prefers—whether he’d stay and sign a long-term contract, leave through a trade or explore the marketplace next year.
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I share the grief of former collegiate and PBA standout JB Yango and his family. JB’s mom, Purification Verzola Yango, passed away Dec. 12. Her remains were buried at the catholic cemetery in Cuyapo, Nueva Ecija Dec. 19. News of the death was relayed to me by Teody Verzola, a cousin of JB’s.
Each time I was home in Cuyapo during my days as a young, starving newspaperman, Mrs. Yango was a gracious host at dinner and the ensuing beer and Akai double-tape deck music soirees with her late husband Eping, myself and a common buddie, Ricardo Gonzales, also deceased.
Manong Eping and Manang Puring always believed that their eldest son, JB, then a gangling, clumsy ball player in Cuyapo’s inter-barangay leagues, would someday rise to captivate the nation as a national player and a PBA superstar. And by golly, he sure did.