Lost in China 2

GUANGZHOU, China – Saturday wasn't a good day for Pinoy Basketball. The tough news was how Gilas Pilipinas was “out-everythinged” by Italia. Make no mistake about it. Italy is a sound, solid technical team that deserved to win.

The hard part was how it didn’t look we did enough to at least compete with them. No, we’re not asking Gilas to beat the Italians. We just need to see the team be more aggressive, challenge the other side, give our best and go all-out. Win or lose, Gilas gihapon. While not praying/expecting for a win against Serbia tonight, we hope the players will step up and at least compete.

As if losing by 46 points wasn’t bad, our group had our share of bad news right before the game. Our bus driver didn’t know how to get to the stadium! He took on us a narrow service road beside a river that didn’t allow big vehicles like buses.

And when he realized we couldn’t go any further, he had the bus on reverse mode for around a kilometer until we reached a corner where we could go back on our way. That was the longest “reverse” ride I’ve ever had in my life. We then had to walk another kilometer from the main road to the venue and barely made it on time to witness the playing of the Philippine national anthem.

As expected, the stadium was packed with Pinoys outnumbering Italian fans plus the large Chinese audience. After the game, the traditional Pinoy-style of “hanging out” outside the venue to chit-chat was the post-game activity. Also there were Mon Fernandez, members of the PBA Board of Governors, PBA Commissioner Willie Marcial, Sen. Bato de la Rosa, Sen. Francis Tolentino, POC President Bambol Tolentino, Cong. Ronnie Puno and Salvador Panelo.

An interesting sight was that of Pinoy and Italian fans having their pictures taken together with flags of both nations displayed side by side. After all is done, it’s just a game. And for this bleacher bum’s group of Gilas fans, it was back to chatting and laughing while having dinner at around 11:30pm by the Pearl River.

Hats off to our media friends in the group who are working their butts off here: Olmin Leyba, Dodo Catacutan, Jonas Terrado and Julius Manicad. They had a rough moment when they couldn’t find a decent trip from Foshan to Guangzhou Friday night. But it looks they found a good samaritan along the way.