MANILA, Philippines – The greatest Filipino basketball player of all time deserves the greatest respect and recognition.
And Carlos Loyzaga, considered as the best Filipino to ever play the game, got the much-deserved reward after he was awarded a plaque of appreciation and a check amounting to P1 million by the Philippine Sports Commission yesterday.
From the said amount, PSC chair Richie Garcia explained P600,000 came from Loyzaga's uncollected pension fund while the rest was just a bonus for the same person that brought Philippine basketball to unprecedented heights.
"Actually, he has about P600,000 uncollected pension money but we rounded it off to P1 million as our way of saying thank you to him for putting the country in the world basketball map," said Garcia.
The wheelchair-bound Loyzaga, who had a stroke three years ago, along with wife Victoria and daughter Bing visited Garcia Thursday.
Loyzaga, of course, is part of the national team that took the bronze in the 1954 World Championship in Rio de Janerio, Brazil, the country's highest achievement in the international basketball stage.
Apart from it, Loyzaga also spearhead the country to four gold medals in the Asian Games in 1951 in New Delhi, 1954 in Manila, 1958 in Tokyo and 1962 in Jakarta and two more mints in the FIBA-Asia Championship, formerly Asian Basketball Confederation, in 1960 in Manila and 1963 in Taipei.
Loyzaga, known as "The Big Difference," is the only Filipino to make it into the First Mythical Team of the 1954 FIBA Worlds.