IT’S the Baby Faced Assassin versus The King for all the National Basketball Association (NBA) championship marbles. The Beast of the East against The Best in the West. The two most popular players in the world go at it starting on Thursday (Friday Philippine time) after a weeklong break.
Both Cleveland and Golden State easily disposed off their respective opponents. Stephen Curry and LeBron James finished first and second, respectively, in the 2015 All-Star Game balloting. This year’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) and arguably the greatest shooter in league history goes up against a future Hall of Famer and four-time MVP who needs no introduction.
In boxing, styles make fights, while in basketball, this series will boil down to execution and who wants it more and who’s hungrier. The Warriors like to move the ball around a lot and get everyone involved in the offense and they’ll run at every opportunity. James and Kyrie Irving are the catalysts of the Cleveland offense. Coaches from both teams are neophytes to this experience but Cavs Coach David Blatt has been a Euroleage Champion as a coach, and Steve Kerr as a player for the Chicago Bulls then the San Antonio Spurs.
We look at the bench, Festus Ezeli, David Lee, Mareese Speights, Harrison, Leandro Barbosa and Shaun Livingston for Golden State. Cleveland’s bench only features Matthew Dellavedova and Imam Shumpert, so the longer this series goes, the advantage has to go to Golden State. The Warriors franchise have not held the Larry O’Brien trophy since 1975, and the city of Cleveland has not had a sports team win a title since the National Football League’s (NFL) Cleveland Browns won the Vince Lombardi trophy in 1964. Both teams are hungry, both cities are hungry. I see the series going the full route with the City by the Bay winning it all.
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AN interesting e-mail was passed on to me from former Philippine Sports Commission Chairman Dr. Aparicio “Perry” Mequi about a national youth sports campaign called Kabataang Isport Makabayan (KIM).
Mequi is, according to the Foundation University web site, the “director of Sports, all sports, at Foundation University (FU)—grade school, high school and college. He is also the founder of the Institute of Youth Sports for Peace, the director of the Dumaguete Marathon runs, and coordinator of intercollegiate and intramural games for the university.” He is also the dean of their Graduate School.
According to Mequi, KIM is a “national campaign utilizing the sports of football and basketball, and dedicated to produce children and youth with a strong sense of patriotism, pride, partnership and peace.”
Mequi continues, “KIM will also be a project to professionalize coaches and mentors of our youth, of our young people. KIM chapters will be formed nationwide, it will be a youth militant and advocacy movement for sports to instill into our young people the values of patriotism, pride and peace, and this will start in the Negros Island region.”
For basketball, Mequi proposes the “Tagutlo para sa bayan ito,” which will be under KIM. Mequi further elaborates: “The event theme will be “Kabataang basketbolista para sa bayan.” Its mission and vision is to provide opportunities for children and the youth ages 13 under and 16 under, both boys and girls to participate in three-on-three basketball—the Fiba-Asia grassroots sports where the Philippines is designated as the lead country for the campaign in Asia.
Mequi expounds, “The participants will be called ‘Patriots’ who will play their games for personal, national and international pride and dedicate themselves as ‘Peacemakers’ and “Peacekeepers.’”
According to Mequi, “They organized a successful KIM event at Foundation University in Dumaguete City, which was inaugurated last May 19. With only two weeks of preparation, 20 boys and eight girls took part with one team coming all the way from Santander, Cebu.”
The experiment that the Foundation University launched on May 19 could provide the framework for possible corporate sponsors’ legacy in sports. To private companies and entities looking for a corporate social responsibility project, you don’t have to look far, here’s an advocacy that is worthy of espousing.