Kobe struts stuff in US NCAA Div. 1

MANY people in the PBA community will remember him as the cute little blonde boy borne by Papa Bear Benjie Paras on one of his massive shoulders as he strode towards the weights room of the Ultra for his regular workout.

Carrying tiny humans on each shoulder was Benjie’s way of starting his weight session.

Perched on his opposite shoulder was Andre, his elder son who followed half of his footsteps and is now an entertainment heartthrob of GMA 7.

The younger Kobe has just graduated from high school and will start his college education at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) this coming school year.

Kobe is in the list of rookies who will play in the academe’s varsity basketball team, a first-division US NCAA squad.

Benjie and Andre, and the rest of the Paras family are now in California where they attended Kobe’s graduation.

Benjie raised Andre and Kobe by himself. He is separated from their biological mother, movie star Jackie Forster.

Before proceeding to the weights room, Benjie would deposit his two boys at the Ultra’s PBA Commissioner’s Office where the staff off Jun Benardino was happy to babysit.

Kobe is the first homegrown Filipino to play in a First Division US NCAA team, if my memory serves me right.

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Fans got very curious when Gilas coach Tab Baldwin announced that the doors of the basketball gym where the team would be practicing would be closed to outsiders and fans.

Usually, the venue of the workouts was the Meralco Gym in Pasig.

Because of this restriction, people started to wonder: Did Tab expect to be scouted by the enemy?

Someone from the Samahang Basketball ng Pilipinas said this wasn’t the reason.

Tab just didn’t want the players to be distracted since it’s barely a month now before the Fiba Olympic qualifying tournament starting July 5 in Manila.

The fans who watch the practice sessions keep taking photos and selfies and then post these on social media.

Gilas Pilipinas is scheduled to fly to Europe for a nine-day training camp in Greece and will play against the national team of Turkey this month.

After that, Baldwin and his boys will proceed to Bologne, Italy, for a pocket tournament against China, Canada and Italy.

The Philippines will try to snare a slot in the Olympics for the first time in decades.