Looking For Mr. Goodcoach (Great will do)

June 8, 2000

When one team is better on paper than the other (i.e. Nueva Ecija), has more games won (6-6 against 4-9), is playing on its homecourt (second homecourt, at least), comes off a blowout win over the number-one team in the conference, has been to the conference finals once and the national finals; leads by 25 points in the third quarter then loses by six points in the end – there must be something wrong.
When the home crowd resorts to throwing things at the visiting team, venting its frustration (read: disgust) for the loss on the eventual winner instead of the expected winner on whom the anger really is…definitely, there’s something terribly wrong.

So, if it’s not the lineup, not the court advantage, in what direction should we look for the blame? Without saying choke, which is synonymous with the Gems anyway, can we say coach? Jose Maria Antonio “Tonichi” Yturri’s sour honey attracts flies.
You can’t ask from workhorses Matthew Mitchell, Stephen Padilla, Michael Manigo, Arnold Gamboa, et al. more than they have been giving out.
Can’t help that with creative coaches like Francis Rodriguez and Louie Alas as the helm of the Gems ship, this team could have been champions in the first two seasons with the departed talents like Donaldo Hontiveros, Robert Wainwright, and Chris Mendoza. It’s not that Yturri doesn’t know his basketball. He does. He is a former national and Philippine Basketball Association player. And he did revive the Gems after a sorry 0-3 start in the Metropolitan Basketball Association’s debut season.

DON’T UNDERSTAND. But also last season, Yturri said something like, “I don’t understand this team,” after the Gems won a scrambling victory, erecting a substantial lead then almost losing it to give the game away. Again. Maybe that’s the problem, and Yturri, in his heart of hearts, knows it.

Now, let’s look across a very big pond to search for parallelisms. The Los Angeles Lakers. The Cebu Gems. Both have talent written all over their names. In the latter’s case, at least in last year’s lineup.

Last Monday’s Lakers win over the Portland Trail Blazers was a classic case of composure, after getting back from a big fourth-quarter deficit. Phil Jackson’s admonition to his team when they were behind by 15 points: “Don’t let Shaq carry you. Just play your game.” And the Lakers did, eventually winning by five.
The Lakers have the 7-foot giant Shaquille O’Neal. The Gems have Mitchell, who at 6-6 is no midget himself. Both are the low-post pillars of their teams. Now, if only Yturri could say to the rest of the Gems: “Don’t let Matt carry you.”
Yturri has effectively taken away Manigo’s skill of making points on his own, turning him from a very resourceful individualistic off-guard to point guard and back to off guard. One Cebuano coach has commented on the confusion Yturri has crated in the team by constantly changing his starting lineup. The players in effect don’t know their roles. At least, Mitchell always knows he has to amass most of his point-production in the post. He leads the Gems in points, rebounds, and blocks. He carries the Gems.

‘EXPERIMENTS.’ The local coach also harped on Yturri’s “experiments” – making Manigo, even Giovanni Pineda, the point guard. No fixed roles. No fixed goals. The starters’ confusion rubs off on the relievers.

For the Cebu Gems’ sake, Yturri ether goes or someone comes in to help him coach a misused, misguided, talented team. Someone like former Gems assistant coach Luigi Trillo – an assistant in the truest sense of the word. Be his figurative third eye, to prevent him from being blindsided. To make him see what he can’t. Even Phil Jackson has a Tex Winter.

Looking across a much smaller pond. The Negros Slashers. Pre-Jun Noel (with a little help from Wainwright’s groin injury) guided the Slashers to the first-ever MBA National Finals against the Pampanga Dragons. Cancelling out a classic confrontation between the traditional basketball powerhouses of the north (Manila) and south (Cebu).

The Slashers organization is grateful to Noel for that trip to the finals. But after the woeful state Negros found itself at the tail end of this year’ first conference, they dropped Noel and turned to Slashers assistant coach Robert Sison. Under him, Negros zoomed to five straight wins. A change for the better, obviously.
The Gems need a level-headed mentor, a steady rudder on its boat. And that’s not even mentioning management.

Am I allowed to say bad words? Something like – constructive criticism?
The Gems’ win over the Pasig-Rizal Pirates yesterday was just a glitch. With the organization unchanged, this team won’t fail to disappoint this basketball-crazy island later. The Gems have been consistent in their inconsistency.

OF ADDENDA AND NO-CALLS. Blazers-Lakers Game 7. Shaquille O’Neal did not have to carry the Lakers, the referees did. Fouls: a left elbow by Shaq to Arvydas Sabonis (uncalled) and a very dubious 6th foul on the Lithuanian when Shaq tried to lay up on him. Steve Smith slashing to the goal through two Lakers before running smack into a wall of a body block named Shaq. No foul called. That makes it three. There’s more. Lakers Robert Horry gets an inbound pass with about three seconds left, Detlef Schrempf fouls him, then the Lakers forward delivers an elbow after the whistle on Schrempf. No second motion or technical assessed on Horry. I rest my case.
Referees blinded by the Big Lights of Big City LA? Or official sanction from NBA Commissioner David Stern? The Glamor Boys of LA will certainly be a bigger draw than the less popular albeit just as gifted Blazers. The league will earn a fewer millions with the elimination of New York, the other big City on the eastern seaboard. The “hick” team Indiana Pacers made sure of that in six games.
O’Neal’s joy after the Lakers pulled through in Game 7 against the Blazers. Rewind to O’Neal’s joy after the first-seed Orlando Magic pulled through for a slot in the National Finals against the West sixth-seed Houston Rockets and his gargantuan disappointment after Hakeem Olajuwon and Sam Cassell humiliated O’Neal and Anfernee Hardaway in four straight games. Go underdogs!

Note: This is not the very first sports column I did for a Cebu daily. There were a few others (which I could not find yet). There was no newsroom Internet archiving at the time I started doing a sports column, so Googling won’t do. I will post those lost masterpieces (ahem!) as soon as I get a hold of them (and type them down).

P.S. Pssst! Can you keep a secret? I didn’t get paid for the first four sports columns I ever did, because, as the top-dog editor later told me, “We didn’t agree on it.” As if I needed to tell him that I wasn’t doing it for the money but purely for the pleasure of writing and not getting paid, thus preserving my amateur status. Maybe that’s the reason Olympic athletes in some events are prohibited from endorsing commercial products with the tacit threat that they will lose their valuable amateur status and be unable to play in the Games. It makes for logic in his deviously unethical mind. He also thinks he is a legend.