WHAT puso are you talking about?
Do you mean puso ng saging, you know vegans use it to make veggie-burger?
But if you’re talking about puso as in “the heart of a champion” or probably a “fighting heart” in reference to the current men’s national basketball team a.k.a. Gilas Pilipinasrepresenting these motley group of islands in the FIBA 2019 World Cup in Foshan, China, then the reference is off tangent.
Pusong mamon is probably a much more accurate description while puso ng saging is the next best thing. But puso as in “the heart of a champion” or “a fighting heart”? Nothing could be further from the truth.
Based on the results of the three games they played so far, it looks like they will come home with an unblemished no win record. Their first two games against European basketball powerhouses Italy and Serbia? A massacre is perhaps the kindest description, with an average of more than 50 points losing margin.
It’s quite ironic that both these nations, Serbia and Italy, have less population than the Philippines and are traditionally known as footballing nations, with Italy winning the FIFA World Cup several times and Serbia in the top tier of international football.
Italy and Serbia have only taken on into basketball quite recently as compared to basketball-crazy Philippines and I’m sure you can’t find kids in these two countries playing pickup basketball in street corners with makeshift basketball hoops. What you will find will be kids juggling footballs or playing “street football” in some vacant lots, or futsal in a basketball court in the public park.
The third game against Angola, a team eight or nine places below the Philippines in the FIBA rankings, is not only embarrassing but the perfect showcase of the sorry state of basketball in the Philippines. Of course we lost to Angola. Why, did you expect to win?
But I could be wrong as they have two more games to play and that unblemished no-win record could be stained with a victory. They play next against Tunisia, an African basketball and football powerhouse so definitely another massacre. But sometimes miracles happen.
If that happens then good for them. If not,
then it’s just as well. (Gilas Pilipinas
continued to struggle in the 2019 FIBA World Cup. It was pulverized by Tunisia,
86-67, in the classification round on Friday night, Sept. 6, at the Wukesong
Sports Arena in Beijing, China. – Ed.)
The last game would be against also another team with an unblemished no-win
record, Iran. Win or lose, it does not matter; it’s just a consolation,
no-bearing game, so puso and all that
nonsense.
Basketball in the Philippines remains in a perpetual state frozen in time somewhere in the 1980s during the glory days of the PBA or the Philippine Basketball Association and from there the game has never developed and is still played the way Robert Jaworski, Rudy Destrito and Ramon Fernandez played it during their heydays.
The PBA is not a professional basketball league; it is a live and televised entertainment program using a corrupted form of basketball as the main game show.
It is not only on the same level with that very popular noontime variety show “Eat Bulaga” but their lives are intertwined as well. The PBA is the “Eat Bulaga” of basketball while “Eat Bulaga” is the PBA of stupid, mind-numbing noontime television variety shows.
Let’s put it this way, Philippine basketball is several decades behind the development of basketball as an international sport.
The European brand of basketball is now the epitome of how international basketball is played; it has overtaken by a sizable gap the NBA or National Basketball Association. If not for the influx of top calibre European basketball players in the NBA, the game in the United States would not have developed and would remain in perpetual limbo in the Rucker Park brand of basketball.
And the Pinoysalways root for the underdog. That’s a defeatist attitude. You see, if you lose you already have the perfect excuse, I’m the underdog expected to lose not to win.
This puso nonsense is another variation of the defeatist and victim mentality. You use it to console yourself when you lose, “It’s okay I lost but at least I gave it all my heart.” Bullocks! If you did, then you probably won.
Of course, playing and winning any sport, basketball for that matter, requires proper skills, height, physical stamina and teamwork. After all, it is a team sport and, above all, a working intelligence of the game./PN
