Naturalization overkill

A vast number of Filipino basketball fans were livid at the number of naturalized athletes that host Cambodia has fielded into the 32nd Southeast Asian Games, most of all in basketball. The shocking appearance of a platoon of naturalized Americans and the consequent loss of Gilas Pilipinas was an oversized, bitter pill to swallow. Sadly, FIBA is not involved in these intra-continental tournaments, and doesn’t really have the infrastructure to police – much less organize – smaller basketball events. In FIBA tournaments, only one naturalized player is allowed per team, and all players must have acquired their passports by the age of 16. That explains why more than one of the PBA standouts like Christian Standhardinger, Stanley Pringle and others can play in the SEA Games, but not in any FIBA tournaments. SEA Games rules are so fluid and flexible that a host country can do virtually anything to ensure a rich medal total. Cambodia has limited entries of other countries in several sports, added new sports that no one else plays, and fielded new citizens in several events. For Filipinos, however, it’s the egregious misuse of this privilege in basketball that grates the most.

The most notorious incident of rushed citizenship for medals took place right before the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Zola Budd was a talented teen-aged middle-distance and long-distance runner from South Africa. Unfortunately, South Africa’s racist apartheid policy caused the International Olympic Committee to ban the country entirely from all Olympic competitions. She was hurriedly given UK citizenship so that she could run for the British in LA. Unfortunately, past the midway point of the 3,000-meter run, the newly-minted barefoot Brit collided twice with world champion and Olympic favorite Mark Decker of the US. Off balance, Decker inadvertently stepped on Budd with her spiked track shoe, drawing blood from the ankle. In the second collision, Budd knocked over Decker, injuring her hip and rendering her unable to finish the race. (In another, little-known case, Nigerian center Hakeem Olajuwon, who became a naturalized US citizen in 1993, was granted an exemption by FIBA and allowed to play for America in the 1996 Atlanta Centennial Olympics.)

Let’s look back at why there is open basketball to begin with. In 1988, the USSR, which was basically Russia and all the surrounding countries it had forcibly annexed, demolished a team of American collegians in men’s basketball in Seoul. The top four players of that Soviet team were actually conscripted Lithuanian nationals, including Sarunas Maciulionis, Rimas Kurtinaitis and Arvydas Sabonis. At the time, Europeans routinely bounced back and forth between amateur and professional status by simply declaring that they were one or the other right before a tournament. In the aftermath of that embarrassment and outcry from NBA players, USA Basketball pushed for open basketball, following in the footsteps of tennis. This allowed pros to play side-by-side with amateurs in international competitions from the Olympics and World Championships on down.

What a lot of people are asking is why this kind of skewing of the rules is allowed to persist. While the intent of the SEA Games Federation is fair play, the practice is the exact opposite. Host countries can add, subtract and tweak the number of events, bend rules and schedules, except for the mandatory Olympic sports. Citizenship is pretty much fair game, hence the naturalization overkill.

The next question is whether or not our national basketball officials knew the extent of naturalization that led to the embarrassing loss of Gilas Pilipinas to Cambodia Thursday evening; and if they did, couldn’t they find a way to win, anyway? Granted, final rosters are usually only revealed at the team managers’ meeting days before the Games’ opening, but the information still seemed belated in coming.

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Anta Philippines recently inked a partnership with the Maharlika Pilipinas Basketball League (MPBL). At a well-attended event at their store in SM Megamall, Anta Philippines general manager JP Paglinawan and MPBL Commissioner Kenneth Duremdes signed the pact, which will now see the Anta logo printed on the jerseys of all of the league’s players all over the country.

“We are excited to be partnering with one of the most popular leagues in the Philippines,” Paglinawan declared. “Anta has always believed in supporting the best and up and coming basketball players in the country.”

Anta recently opened its 20th store in the Philippines, most of which were built and launched in the last year and a half.