Coach Tab Baldwin. INQUIRER PHOTO/TRISTAN TAMAYO
MANILA, Philippines–Speaking to Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) officials for the first time since his controversial comments on the league went public last Thursday, Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas (SBP) Gilas project director Tab Baldwin on Monday apologized to commissioner Willie Marcial, saying his remarks were taken out of context.
In a conference call with Marcial, deputy commissioner Eric Castro and league legal counsel Melvin Mendoza, Baldwin said he felt bad over the impact of his comments in the Coaches Unfiltered podcast.
Baldwin, who has steered Ateneo to three straight UAAP crowns, categorically said the PBA’s one-import format is a mistake and accused the league’s referees of giving all of the rules latitude to imports.
The Ateneo mentor who also served as a consultant of TNT in the 2013-2014 season said he only answered the question when asked “what surprised me when I first came to the Philippines.”
Marcial said he accepted Baldwin’s apology, although that won’t stop the league from sanctioning the Kiwi-American coach, who is listed as an assistant of Bong Ravena at TNT KaTropa.
“He apologized and he said he will respect whatever decision of the PBA will be,” Marcial told the Inquirer over the phone on Monday night. “The league usually no longer summons those who make comments detrimental to the league and just slaps a fine, but he asked for an audience and we welcomed the gesture that he reached out to us.”
The league was still meeting as of press time before deciding the penalty on Baldwin, whose comments on how the PBA runs its import-laden conferences and the officiating were deemed by Marcial as “detrimental to the league.”
“I told him that this (meeting) was supposed to be the proper venue for his suggestions,” Marcial said of his 45-minute conference call with Baldwin. “I told him I have a job to do and he said he respects that.”
The PBA however, is just one group that Baldwin has to mend fences with as members of the league’s board, which his TNT boss Ricky Vargas chairs, and the Basketball Coaches Association of the Philippines also took offense at his comments.
Barangay Ginebra’s Alfrancis Chua was also fuming and gave out a piece of his mind last week, even as Fiba will also surely react after Baldwin called the world basketball governing body “criminal” for one of its citizenship rules.
Baldwin, who coached the Philippines to a silver medal in the Fiba Asia Championships in 2015, called local coaches “tactically immature,” a comment that did not sit well with majority of PBA coaches.
PBA Commissioner Willie Marcial. SHERWIN VARDELEON/INQUIRER
NLEX’s Yeng Guiao and NorthPort’s Pido Jarencio were vocal in lashing out at Baldwin, with Jarencio branding him as an “arrogant pr*ck” in a social media post.
NorthPort team owner Mikee Romero also aired his disgust in a statement released on Sunday, calling Baldwin a “racist.”
Baldwin’s statement also angered his bosses at the SBP, so to speak, with local cage body president Al Panlilio telling the Inquirer also on Sunday that the former Gilas coach’s views “was his own opinion and doesn’t align with how the SBP thinks and with what I think” as far as the local coaches, Fiba and the PBA are concerned. INQ