The Final Score: Boxing by Heart. Basketball by Blood.

We love Pacquiao today. We’ll surely go bananas for boxing on Sunday. But we will always be a basketball nation. One won’t find summer boxing meets in every corner. Starting this month, basketball tournaments will sprout in all forms: inter-barangay, inter-village, inter-color, inter-everything. The average Filipino will be hard-pressed to name five boxers who actively fight for a living. That same person will find it just as hard to name five able-bodied Filipino males who don’t dribble a basketball by choice.

Thanks to Pacquiao, boxing is in our heart. It’s a sizzling national love affair that’ll last until Pacman says he’s done. Thanks to an almost century-long obsession, however, basketball is in our blood. Some of us box. Most of us play hoops. This is why supporting Smart Gilas is more than just cheering for a good guy like Chris Tiu or rooting for a band of collegiate stars. It calls for a deep personal investment. It calls for optimism of the highest order. Yet our optimism for international basketball has been battered beyond recognition by broken promises, quadrennial heartbreak and habitual disillusionment. Supporting Smart Gilas, then, demands faith. I don’t know if there will ever be a next Pacquiao. I do know there will be more Gilas-like teams in the future; teams who will either follow-up on Gilas’ historic feats or mandated to improve on yet more hardcourt heartbreak. There are generations who have no idea how it feels to support a winning national basketball team. The concept is alien to them. Those who witnessed better days, on the other hand, are hardened cynics by now. So one is either too naïve or too numb. And Gilas now asks both sides to believe in the unbelievable. On Sunday, Pacquiao will make us love boxing even more and perhaps, for some, believe in basketball as a source of national pride even less. Maybe basketball is a myth. Maybe we already had our shot at world glory with King Caloy Loyzaga and the knights of his round-table. Maybe that was as good as it gets. But never in our wildest dreams did we expect one Manny Pacquiao to live out the stuff sporting fantasies are made of and take all of us along for the ride. Then again, Pacman will be the first to say that his crazy world now started with a speck of belief. Pacquiao’s world dominance, the kind even NBA All-Stars go giddy over, all began with a little dream. Perhaps it’s better that Gilas works under Pacquiao’s gigantic shadow, away from the constant scrutiny of skeptics and the hyper-optimism of fanatics. Cynics declare a state-of-calamity after each sprained ankle. Fanatics declare national holidays after modest 2-game winning streaks. It seems counter-productive anyway to argue over every lay-up. Let Gilas quietly build its dream brick by brick. I hope Gilas takes over once Pacquiao calls it a day. It’s not a sure deal. It’s not even a gut feel. It really is a supreme act of basketball faith. - GMANews.TV