‘Work hard down low’

The scene was particularly amusing. In a Makati office building, employees were huddled in front of a television screen, watching Qatar and Chinese Taipei hammering each other on Day 7 of the Fiba Asia Championship. The office workers were cheering for Qatar to win—a victory that would bring Gilas Pilipinas back to its original route to the World Cup in Spain.

But one of basketball’s nastiest quirks would come into play with Qatar’s victory: The quotient system. A statistical method of breaking ties, the quotient system can be very fickle. On one hand, a Qatar victory below 15 points would put the Philippines one easy Hong Kong victory from getting back on the road it had charted before the tournament started. More than 15? It was back to preparing for China.

That’s why the group of office workers that collected in front of the television screen were initially cheering for Qatar when the game started. But then the Qataris, with veteran Yaseen Musa leading the way, erected a 68-56 lead in the fourth quarter. Suddenly, those employees were now cheering for Chinese Taipei.

The Taiwanese then launched their own run, tying the count at 68. Naturally, the employees shifted back to cheering for the Qataris.

“We came into this game knowing we had to win by 16 to steal the top spot,” said Qatar coach Thomas Wisman. “We just ran out of gas after we got that 12-point lead.”

Luckily for an entire nation that cheered for the Qataris less than 24 hours after cheering against them, there was just enough gas in the tank to set the Philippines up for a return to the top spot it had slipped out of with its painful loss to the Taiwanese.

Daoud Mosa Daoud hit a layup that made it 70-68 and Jarvis Hayes added a split from the stripe to make it a three-point cushion in the dying seconds. Misses by superstar forward Tien Lei and veteran Tseng Wen-ting sealed the defeat of Chinese Taipei.

The victory made Wisman one of the most-loved figures in Asian basketball during the tournament—even if only for a day. And it’s not like Wisman didn’t know it.

“I think I can run for president now and win,” he told journalists after the game.

“Qatar did us one big favor,” said a beaming Marcus Douthit.

“I didn’t expect the outcome,” said shooter Larry Fonacier, who was working out at the hotel gym while the game was going on.

On the rebound: Japeth Aguilar had a disappointing night, but he could still patrol the boards.

But that just got the job half done. The other half still lay waiting to be accomplished. For Gilas to tab the top spot, it still had to beat Hong Kong. Amid the celebration of a basketball nation, it was easy to overlook that part of the equation. After all, traditionally, Hong Kong never posed that much of a threat to the Philippines in basketball. An ice cube had a better chance of surviving in a steam engine furnace than Hong Kong in a game against the country’s top pros.

“I lived in Hong Kong for a long time—22 years,” said Manny V. Pangilinan, the telecommunications kingpin who heads the Philippines’ national basketball federation and bankrolls the country’s national basketball program. “They’re not really a basketball power.”

That’s an understatement if ever there was one.

Mahir Mohammed Banez Al-Rubah, a product development specialist in one of the Philippines’ biggest banks, knew why of all the playdates during the Fiba Asia tournament, this was the one game that he was able to comp a precious ticket.

“I figured it would be a lopsided game in our favor,” he said.

One person, though, sensed trouble.

“I knew we were going to start flat. Our minds were on the Chinese Taipei-Qatar game,” said national coach Chot Reyes.

And Reyes needed a fantastic start from the Filipinos. Marcus Douthit was nursing an injured leg and putting the game away early would give the naturalized center precious rest ahead of the knockout rounds.

Instead, it was Hong Kong that got off to a blazing start.

With Donald Reid and Siu Wing Chan leading the way, Hong Kong scored the first seven points of the match and even led by double-digits early, 29-19.

“When they started scoring against us, I started getting worried,” Pangilinan said.

With the 6-foot-8 Reid (12 points and 19 rebounds) imposing his presence down low and Chan connecting from the outside (four triples), Gilas Pilipinas blew its chance to get Douthit some down time.

And this was what Reyes hated the most.

“I was very upset at the players,” he said. “And it’s not because we didn’t dominate. It’s because we could’ve rested Marcus in this game. We should not have needed him anymore.”

Japeth Aguilar, the 6-foot-8 beanpole who should have picked up the cudgels for Douthit, went from a highlight reel star to a disappointment in the span of a day, prompting Reyes to joke that the media should “stop praising Japeth.”

Aguilar and Junemar Fajardo, a 6-foot-10 budding star who also should have spelled Douthit in the game, combined for just 9 minutes of action. The only contribution to the stat sheet by the duo were the two attempts that Aguilar missed. Nothing else.

“It was one of those games where you felt like you got punched in the mouth before the fight even started,” said Gilas Pilipinas skipper Jimmy Alapag, who earlier that day watched with teammate Gabe Norwood as Qatar pushed the Philippines on to the cusp of the No. 1 slot. “We were put in a situation where we had to grind it out. That was a quick, short reminder that every team we play, we cannot take for granted.”

“They came out and pushed us and really challenged us to compete,” added Norwood. “They out-hustled us for three-and-a-half quarters. We played poorly.”

Alapag was also aware of the Douthit situation, saying that, ideally, the New York native should have played only 10 to 15 minutes to save him for the knockout phase.

“But we had to extend him a little bit,” Alapag said.

Douthit wound up seeing action for 32 minutes, with every single second adding to the wear-and-tear of his injured leg. The result was a 67-55 victory in a game that opened up only in the fourth period.

“We kept it close because they weren’t able to hit their shots early,” said Reid. Gilas Pilipinas made just 5 of 24 attempts from beyond the arc, forcing the team to work hard down low. And a lot of that work was shouldered by Douthit, who needed to match the energy Reid provided underneath.

The tournament was heading into a rest day, but even that wasn’t enough to fully heal Douthit’s injury. The additional minutes of basketball duty the injured leg had to endure would eventually take its toll in a big way—and pave the way for Gilas Pilipinas’ highlight moment of the tournament.

Part 8, up Sept. 3, 11:30 pm, Manila time.

 Gilas beats back upset-minded Hong Kong