Alas, Fuel Masters to go all the way

After decades of fulfilling promises made to others, Louie Alas is trying to make good with one that he made to himself.

“It’s sort of an unfinished business,” he told the Inquirer after Phoenix Pulse practice at Upper Deck Gym in Pasig on Tuesday afternoon as the Fuel Masters await a semifinal foe in the PBA Philippine Cup.

Alas said he has long yearned for another crack at being head coach after an initial try that didn’t go well.

He’s had offers to join Red Bull as a deputy and even take over GlobalPort in the past, but scheduling woes got in the way and he stuck it out for a long time as a chief assistant at Alaska.

“The farthest I made it [to winning a title in the PBA] was in the semis,” he said. “Of course, I would love to become a champion as a head coach. I’ve had titles, but they all came during a time where I was an assistant.”

That PBA shot came in 2001 with Mobiline. And it was a turbulent one.

“[That episode] started off on the wrong foot,” he recalled. “When everything got settled, Asi (Taulava) was deported. Everything went wrong.”

Fortunately, the job at Phoenix is letting him address that.

“I would want to win one on my own,” Alas said. “Also, this is for my children—who pushed me, who asked me to pursue this (PBA head coaching) once more.”

And given his experience—one that has started from the amateur arenas in St. Francis of Assisi in Las Piñas and stops in the defunct MBA and NCAA as champion with Letran and Manila, to the the big boys’ league in the PBA—Alas knows it won’t be easy.

He knows what he’s talking about, for waiting on the other end would be either TNT or San Miguel Beer, which no team has been able to touch in the all-Filipino Finals in the last four years.