The Final Score: Philippine basketball is an evolving sacrament

I’ve been watching the documentary series “Baseball" by Ken Burns. I’ve seen it before. I’ve been compelled to watch it again. America’s love-hate-love relationship with baseball makes me think. Filipinos’ relationship with basketball is just as unending. It makes your day. It wastes your time. Some drop it like a bad habit. Others can’t because they need it, like oxygen. So what explains basketball’s grip on a country? Rafe Bartholomew had an answer. But that’s his. What’s yours? This is mine: it’s like a marriage, locked since the beginning of time. Yet like relationships, our bond with basketball is flawed. I can’t blame fans who are now jaded and hostile to the sport. I wonder if they no longer have the very DNA that once made them fans. New genes have turned them into something else; belligerent. They’re ready to underline the impending demise of a sport so successful in letting them down. Yet I’m still here. Sure, my job is to watch, talk and write about basketball. But if I followed my original career choice (advertising), I know I’ll still be a fan (albeit one who loves the sport but is already too cautious to go all-in). Hence, leagues must make the relationship between fan and sport work. To keep the fire burning. To regain trust. It’s a marriage. Not a life sentence. So leagues, whether professional, semi-professional or the hybrid professional-semi-amateur-collegiate-watchamacallit, have this task. It’s never defined in black and white, just stated in a million shades of gray. Or they can do nothing. And basketball stays. Like an appendage. Or they can justify the envy of other sports. Basketball, the heart-breaker, doesn’t deserve all this love. Can’t Filipinos go into sports-fan-rehab? People are free to leave basketball. And since reasons are personal, they are legit. What’s done is done. Basketball is paying for its sins. Proper motivation and creative thinking, however, can expedite the rehabilitation and reconciliation process. Maybe what leagues and fans need are relationship doctors. Pick one: a) marriage counselors or b) Dr. Margie Holmes. I choose b. On the horizon, there are so-called threats. There’s a league from another continent. There’s a sport one hundred times more popular worldwide. But they’re not threats. They’re part of a thread, not a collective Armageddon. The NBA and the Azkals provide clues to Philippine basketball’s continued growth. How can leagues thrive in the multi-media age? How can Facebook help? What’s the social science behind hype and success? What makes fans scream? What inspires a nation? It takes little effort to keep basketball in the background. It takes more effort to make sparks fly between the game and its fans, old and new. It doesn’t have to age. Learn from the past. Invest in the present. Conquer the future. Like baseball in America, Philippine basketball can survive with just ball-and-chain existence. But it can also reinvent itself, ensure it trends on Twitter, win new fans each day and make a century-old relationship feel like a fling again. -- GMA News