Fun, family, firsts

Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Metropolitan Basketball Association, the upstart professional league that challenged the status quo in the sport and created so many memories for fans all over the country. It introduced the concept of regionalism, requiring all teams to enlist players from their regions for at least half of their rosters. It reintroduced Filipino-foreign players, with the plan of phasing them out once they had passed on their knowledge. The MBA was the first to broadcast games live from the provinces on a consistent basis, later from two different venues even. It was the first to have an opening ceremony from two separate locations, one in the north and one in the south. In its short lifespan, it was the first to show fans they deserved great basketball in their own backyard.

On Saturday evening, the ABS-CBN broadcasters’ pool reunited in an intimate dinner to reconnect, reminisce, and recommit to one another. We honored our colleagues and bosses who had passed on, like the network’s Assistant General Manager Rolando Cruz, who tirelessly motivated us and built this television family. Butch Maniego, our veteran analyst and numbers whiz, whose love for food, music and trivia infected us all. Norma Calubaquib, our loving, motherly make-up artist and an original ABS-CBN employee, and others behind the scenes who mobilized a small army to get us through the grueling travel and game schedule. Our memories all overlapped, strung together and wove a gigantic experience that served as a warm blanket at night.

We each pitched in details to complete the colorful puzzles of those trips, like the first home game of the Pampanga Dragons. There were still no five-star hotels in the province, and we had to room together in a motel, with our names embarrassingly posted outside the door of each room. There was also the time we were so excited to swim in the hotel pool after covering the Pangasinan Presidents, only to feel slimy and slippery once we got out of the water. In our first hotel in Davao, the toilets were so loud, everyone heard you flush. And when the Davao Eagles scored their first-ever basket at the old Rizal Memorial Colleges Gym, the fans screamed as if it was Game 7 of the finals. It felt like an earthquake. The dust fell from the rafters, and the ceiling lights swung from side to side.

There were some scary moments, too. One game in Cebu saw the fans spontaneously start throwing things onto the court. In actuality, they were upset with one of their own players who had stepped out of bounds with the ball. But of course, the other team thought that they were the target. In those few seasons commentating from courtside, this writer had been hit by coins, water bottles, cardboard fans, paper airplanes, sparkplugs, marbles and other items. Hazards of the job. Nueva Ecija Patriots coach Joe Lipa once threw his left shoe onto the court. When the referees ignored it, he picked it up and threw it again, promptly getting a technical. He grabbed a plastic chair, paused to gingerly remove someone else’s belongings that were on it, then tossed the chair as well, and promptly got ejected. The Patriots won that road game.

We were all agreed that the MBA was something that would never be replicated again. We were all young, excited and free to travel. Broadcasters today would likely balk at having to repeatedly rendezvous at 2 a.m. for a 5 a.m. flight, for a 2 p.m. game in a far-flung venue that had no air-conditioning. But we all had fun. We all got along. The long road trips let us share wisdom, great food, new friendships, our lives. The history of music and cinema trivia shared by Butch, anchorman and voice-over talent supreme Bob Novales, and sometimes our veteran boss Peter Musngi were unforgettable.

Life sends you where you need to go, and many of us were eventually strewn all over the world. But we will always have those treasured memories that were only ours. And the new ones we will create now, reconnected after all those years.