MANILA, Philippines—Time has chipped away at the edges of this once dominant franchise cornerstone, the way wear and tear once threatened to slowly but surely decommission an ankle battered constantly by long basketball seasons and short breaks in between.
“We would get into the finals and after that, with very little time to recover, another tournament would start,” Petron Blaze veteran and two-time MVP Danny Ildefonso told the Inquirer in Filipino.
“Sooner or later your body will simply give in,” he said, smiling at the memory of a dominant stretch by the Boosters, then known as the San Miguel Beermen.
In his case, his ankle would swell to grotesque proportions, turning to shades of purple at times. For some reason, he would turn that ankle, the left one, during crucial phases of a particular conference like, say, the semifinals.
“Rest is out of the question. You just play on.”
Nowadays, the ankle has not been bothering him. After dominating the paint at the turn of the millennium on a bad left foot where he got most of his lift from, Ildefonso sought treatment for the ankle in 2008 and it has been better ever since.
Except that this time, he has to deal with time. With Olsen Racela calling it quits, Ildefonso is the last of the pillars of the San Miguel Beer squad former national coach Ron Jacobs painstakingly built. Asked to ponder on a what-if, Ildefonso simply smiled and shrugged his shoulder.
What if the ankle was as healthy then as it is now?
“Why bother thinking about that?” he said. “I’ve been blessed with a career that I cannot ask anything more from. Every day I spend with this team is an answered prayer. I am just really thankful for the opportunity that San Miguel gave me and I don’t think I have anything to prove anymore.”
Ildefonso is riding a wave of optimism entering the season, one born from a turn-back-the-clock performance that made him the central figure of one of basketball’s most dramatic upsets—Petron’s Grand-Slam-stopping conquest of a favored Talk ‘N Text squad. He believes that the Boosters will quietly contend for the Philippine Cup. And he says that if he is thrust into the main rotation, he will continue to give what he has always given the franchise.
“Everything that is asked of me,” he said.
“Danny I is there to act as a stabilizer for the team because we’re a very young team right now,” said Racela, now an assistant coach with the team and also the head coach of Energen Pilipinas, the country’s youth squad.
“We really need him out there for his leadership, his defense and his rebounding. He’ll still play a big role for us,” said head coach Ato Agustin.
Ildefonso also acts as some sort of a big brother to the young Petron squad. I’m an antique, he joked. But the lessons he imparts are serious. One thing he frequently stresses is that players have to learn early on to pick their own battles.
“Never try to do more than what you can do,” said Ildefonso. “If you try to do too much, you end up wasting too much energy.”
Ironic advice from someone who, at tip-off during his dominant years was a beefy, 6-foot-5 triple-double waiting to happen.
Reminded about that, he explained: “I would only really score if I had the mismatch. Mostly, I would be asked to defend and rebound. The assists? I want to keep my teammates happy. Besides, when I had the mismatch and teams would double, I had to look for the open man because it makes the game easier.”
And thus he has become one of the best passing big men in the game. And he still has that knack of finding the open man. It was no small wonder that barely seven minutes into a 5-on-5 scrimmage during a Petron practice, Ildefonso had logged four assists. Five, if a cutting Chris Lutz—a rookie—didn’t need assistant coach Biboy Ravanes to pull him aside and remind him about something after fumbling a pass.
“If Danny I has the ball, keep your eyes on him no matter where you are because he will always look to pass,” Ravanes told the former Smart Gilas standout.
It is the passing aspect of his game that has actually contributed to what Ildefonso feels is his strongest suit right now. Passing, he said, simplifies the game.
“Basketball has become very easy to understand and play now,” said Ildefonso, who said he can read the game like he never learned to before. “If only young players can look at basketball the way I see it now, basketball won’t have to be so complicated.”
And so he teaches and preaches, hoping his words won’t fall on deaf ears. If they do, it won’t be his loss anyway. Time may be slowly chipping at Danny Ildefonso’s game, but the wisdom it has left him with is still of great value to a team that extended his contract for two more years.
“I’ll be guiding the young guys for two more years,” he said half-jokingly. “But if the ankle continues to hold up and I don’t get injured, who knows? I know I can still pull off a surprise.”