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LAST APRIL, SMART Gilas team captain and all-around good guy Chris Tiu made a cameo on the celebrity gossip program TMZ. The national team had just played against an American minor-league team that featured rap star The Game, and the show’s cameras caught Ateneo’s former King Eagle hanging out with the rapper.
Pacific Rims examines Philippine basketball from the point of view of a New Yorker who went native in the islands.
The fact that a nation of not-very-tall people would actually have a national basketball team seemed to amuse TMZ producer Harvey Levin. “I bet I could start at center for that team," he wise-cracked, before his staff pointed out that there were actually “some tall-ass Filipinos on that team." On the surface, it’s quite perplexing, ludicrous even, that a people whose men stand, on average, around 5’4" would be so passionate about a game where height has always equaled might. And yet, that same passion burns brightly enough that foreign observers in the Internet age cannot help but take notice: the popular NBA news website HoopsHype.com reports that Manila is among the top 5 sources of its traffic; the acclaimed NBA D-League blog Ridiculous Upside has devoted several posts to news from Philippine basketball teams; and the excellent basketball database ShamSports.com has had to deal with nitpicky emails from Filipino fans about getting the details in reports about Smart Gilas exactly right. The rest of the world has had limited Filipino cultural touchstones – Imelda Marcos, girlie bars in Olongapo, Muslim bandit groups, Manny Pacquiao, and perhaps most recently, violent karaoke-related murders. This is why the release of Rafe Bartholomew’s book about Philippine basketball, "Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin’ in Flip-Flops and the Philippines’ Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball," comes at such an opportune time. A Northwestern University journalism graduate, Bartholomew was a certified basketball nut from a hoops hotbed on the other side of the world, New York City. He was improbably granted a Fulbright scholarship in 2005 to study basketball in the Philippines for a year; he ended up staying for three, cramming his 6-foot-3 frame into tricycles, jeepneys, and MRT trains while chronicling Philippine basketball at every level, from pickup games in jerry-built rims in slum areas, to the intense Philippine Basketball Association championships at the Araneta Coliseum where millions of pesos in bonuses for players were at stake. As a result, he not only provides for the outsider some much-needed context for the game of basketball in the Philippines, something beyond making fun of the locals’ height, and the unfortunately named professional teams such as the Purefoods Tender Juicy Hotdogs. Because Bartholomew’s immersed himself so much into everything Filipino, the book serves as a smart, insightful tour into a culture that does not lend itself to easy definition.
In August 2008, Rafe Bartholomew sat down for an interview with GMANews.TV's Candice Montenegro, who was then doing her undergraduate thesis on college basketball. Bartholomew was then teaching sports writing in Ateneo de Manila University's Communication Department while researching his book.
PACIFIC RIMS IS OSTENSIBLY a basketball book from a Fulbright scholar, and Bartholomew does the U.S. State Department proud with a thorough discussion of Philippine basketball history, a topic that, as he points out in the book, has been woefully underserved by local scholars. He covers almost every relevant period of Philippine basketball through the years: its formative stages during the American colonial period; the legendary national teams led by “The Big Difference" Caloy Loyzaga; the birth of the PBA and the intense Toyota-Crispa rivalry; the development of the two archetypes of the PBA import: the mercurial intensity of Billy Ray Bates and the quiet excellence of Norman Black; Robert Jaworski’s evolution into the PBA’s “Living Legend" and the birth of the Ginebra phenomenon; the invasion of Filipino-American players of local leagues, and the ensuing witch hunt to weed out “Fil-Shams," players with questionable origins; the rise of the Ateneo-La Salle rivalry; up to today’s PBA. The treatises on basketball history sometimes read like homework, but fortunately, Bartholomew does not limit his research to the libraries at the Ateneo and U.P. He throws himself into neighborhood pickup games, where upscale kids in Air Jordan sneakers face off against kanto boys in their Air Tsinelas flip-flops. His hoops sojourns get him gigs as an import in an inter-barangay tournament in Boracay, where he lived his own hoop dream as a local cult hero, and bring him to Cebu to cover an event called the Unano-Bading Showdown, where a team of dwarves channels the Harlem Globetrotters against a tranny Washington Generals team that features bikini-topped forwards named Beyonce and Mother Nature. Indeed, the tangents in Pacific Rims go beyond the basketball court into almost every aspect of Philippine society. Politics rears its ugly head, with the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos making an extended cameo, with his use of basketball as a veritable opium for the masses; the popular Crispa Redmanizers even tour the countryside to stump for the dictator, while the team’s coaching staff led by Marcos son-in-law Tommy Manotoc proudly brandished their “I ♥ Marcos" shirts. Curiously, Bartholomew plays the pop anthropologist and attributes the PBA’s growth in popularity in the ‘70s to its role as an outlet for a people frustrated by the shackles of Martial Law. Bartholomew’s adventures, perhaps inevitably, drag him to the doors of Philippine showbiz. Following in the footsteps of local basketball legends Jaworski and Alvin Patrimonio, he manages to score a short gig on a local primetime soap opera; the result is some of the worst acting by a basketball player ever filmed in the Philippines, which is saying a lot, if you’ve seen any of Patrimonio’s movies. AS A SPORTS BOOK, however, Pacific Rims really shines while detailing Bartholomew’s 2007 PBA Fiesta Conference stint covering the Alaska Aces, who welcome him with open arms, but not before giving him the same Filipino nickname that was given to Panchito in several Joey de Leon movies. Here’s where the inevitable comparisons to David Halberstam’s classic "Breaks of the Game" are drawn, and these comparisons are not entirely unwarranted. Bartholomew’s writing sparkles as he paints portraits of several members of Alaska, making the characters leap out of the pages: Tim Cone, the coaching lifer who taught himself the Chicago Bulls’ triangle offense; Jeffrey Cariaso, the team’s spiritual leader who bridges the divide between the team’s locals and Fil-Ams; Dale Singson and Aaron Aban, former college basketball stars who have bonded at the end of the Alaska bench; Rosell Ellis, the world-weary import seeking basketball redemption; and Willie Miller, perhaps the book’s most indelible character: equal parts jester, enigma, and unstoppable scoring machine. The funniest anecdote in the book involves Miller playing a prank on teammate Tony dela Cruz that gives new meaning to the former’s “Willie Thriller" nickname. Along the way, Bartholomew chronicles, in vivid detail, the highs and the lows of Alaska’s championship run, how they almost fell apart, and how they incredibly came together. Bartholomew sort of lucked out on Alaska’s storybook ending; the team was in the middle of a five-year championship drought before he joined them, and it hasn’t won a championship since. Today, there’s a particular poignancy to Alaska’s 2007 championship, after the team decided to trade its superstar Miller earlier this year, while Cariaso announced that he would be retiring at the end of the season. PERHAPS THE BOOK’S biggest success is that it manages to draw a line connecting the game that’s being played by kids in flip-flops in barangay courts, to the game that’s being played by professionals in Araneta Coliseum in front of thousands of fans. And, for that matter, to the game that’s being played on the blacktops in Bartholomew’s native New York. It might take a million more books for an outsider to understand Filipino culture, but for anyone who’s ever laced up a pair of sneakers, or put on his Air Tsinelas, that Willie Miller spin move makes perfect sense. Jaemark Tordecilla runs the award-winning sports blog Fire Quinito.Rafe Bartholomew will be conducting a reading and book signing at the Union Square Barnes & Noble in New York City on June 16 at 7 pm. After the reading, everyone's invited to go down to Cafe 81, 81 East 7th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues, where Rafe and friends will be toasting Pinoy hoops with San Miguel Beer.
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In August 2008, Rafe Bartholomew sat down for an interview with GMANews.TV's Candice Montenegro, who was then doing her undergraduate thesis on college basketball. Bartholomew was then teaching sports writing in Ateneo de Manila University's Communication Department while researching his book. 
AS A SPORTS BOOK, however, Pacific Rims really shines while detailing Bartholomew’s 2007 PBA Fiesta Conference stint covering the Alaska Aces, who welcome him with open arms, but not before giving him the same Filipino nickname that was given to Panchito in several Joey de Leon movies. Here’s where the inevitable comparisons to David Halberstam’s classic "Breaks of the Game" are drawn, and these comparisons are not entirely unwarranted. Bartholomew’s writing sparkles as he paints portraits of several members of Alaska, making the characters leap out of the pages: Tim Cone, the coaching lifer who taught himself the Chicago Bulls’ triangle offense; Jeffrey Cariaso, the team’s spiritual leader who bridges the divide between the team’s locals and Fil-Ams; Dale Singson and Aaron Aban, former college basketball stars who have bonded at the end of the Alaska bench; Rosell Ellis, the world-weary import seeking basketball redemption; and Willie Miller, perhaps the book’s most indelible character: equal parts jester, enigma, and unstoppable scoring machine. The funniest anecdote in the book involves Miller playing a prank on teammate Tony dela Cruz that gives new meaning to the former’s “Willie Thriller" nickname. Along the way, Bartholomew chronicles, in vivid detail, the highs and the lows of Alaska’s championship run, how they almost fell apart, and how they incredibly came together. Bartholomew sort of lucked out on Alaska’s storybook ending; the team was in the middle of a five-year championship drought before he joined them, and it hasn’t won a championship since. Today, there’s a particular poignancy to Alaska’s 2007 championship, after the team decided to trade its superstar Miller earlier this year, while Cariaso announced that he would be retiring at the end of the season. PERHAPS THE BOOK’S biggest success is that it manages to draw a line connecting the game that’s being played by kids in flip-flops in barangay courts, to the game that’s being played by professionals in Araneta Coliseum in front of thousands of fans. And, for that matter, to the game that’s being played on the blacktops in Bartholomew’s native New York. It might take a million more books for an outsider to understand Filipino culture, but for anyone who’s ever laced up a pair of sneakers, or put on his Air Tsinelas, that Willie Miller spin move makes perfect sense. Jaemark Tordecilla runs the award-winning sports blog Fire Quinito. Rafe Bartholomew will be conducting a reading and book signing at the Union Square Barnes & Noble in New York City on June 16 at 7 pm. After the reading, everyone's invited to go down to Cafe 81, 81 East 7th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues, where Rafe and friends will be toasting Pinoy hoops with San Miguel Beer. 
