Ray Parks . Photo from Asean Basketball League Facebook page
BALIUAG — If Ray Parks had his way, he would have fought through the pain and played for Alab Pilipinas in their all-important Game 2 tiff on Friday.
But the two-time UAAP Most Valuable Player was rendered helpless as he had to watch the Philippine squad suffer an 82-64 defeat at the hands of Singapore to bow out of the 2017 ASEAN Basketball League from the bench.
“I hate that I was injured,” he said. “I wanted to play but I couldn’t. I can’t do anything.”
Parks nursed a sprained ankle for the game while also dealing with a hip injury he has been playing through for almost half of the season. That rendered him inactive for the do-or-die affair at Baliwag Star Arena here, as Alab exited in the semifinals of its maiden season in the regional league.
Though defeated, Parks said that there’s a lot of positives the team can draw from this stint.
Unfortunately, the same problems which haunted the squad from the start continued to hamper the team’s progress as the Singers swept them in the best-of-3 series.
“It’s definitely not the ending we wanted, but we clawed and clawed. We showed flashes of what we could do. It’s just terrible that we’re up and down throughout the game. We showed that we could compete this team,” he said.
With the ABL series now over, Parks shared that he is set to go back to the United States in May to recover from his injuries and continue honing his craft.
“Right now, I’m just trying to get better. I’ll be training first with Tyrone Gordon again and see where that takes us, see what my agent in the States has for us. But I’m open minded to everything and we’ll see how everything goes,” he said. “It’s not just about having opportunities, it’s having the right opportunity.”