WE continue to refuse to accept the 78-67 loss to China because we are in denial mode, as always.
Almost, from the very start, we had high hopes of bagging the gold, which will serve as a ticket to snap a 44-year Philippine absence in Olympic basketball. Our last was in the 1972 Munich Olympics.
It is not that we are sour-graping, it is that by losing to China, we also lost an automatic berth to the 2016 Rio Olympics—in which we should have not.
For, before Gilas left for Changsha City, in Chairman Mao Zedong’s home province of Hunan, everybody was all fired up it could be done.
OK, we appeared a bit awkward when we absorbed a stinging slap right on our first game—a 73-75 loss to lowly Palestine. First-game jitters.
But after piling up seven straight wins, highlighted by that ego-inflating win over our 2013 International Basketball Federation Asia Championship finals tormentor Iran, we got the ferocious feeling we could go all the way to the gold podium.
And then it happened.
Against China in the finals, we misfired shots that were ridiculously dropping consistently in practically all of our seven won-games earlier.
There was only one plausible explanation for that lapse: We lost the battle in the mind. Early.
We had the heart—but, of course. That has always been the battle cry: Puso (heart).
But it is not all heart that can win battles. Mind is of equal import.
Once the mind loses grip of big dreams that can be achieved, the mind will hopelessly bow to reality.
Height is might in basketball and that’s what was dictated on us by China on Saturday early on. With impunity.
After a gallant Gilas’s 15-10 start got erased by a 10-0 counter-enemy attack, a leak showed.
Was China not only tall but fast, too, and a good defender, as well? On this night of all nights?
Yes to all that.
But allowing those to enter our mind as weapons of destruction from China—which, seemingly, was what happened to us after the Chinese spurted to a 20-15 spread—became trigger for all hopes of an upset to evaporate.
Suddenly like an earthquake, our firm belief that China was beatable vanished in a snap.
Beaten in the mind game as in a chess match, the tall Chinese bamboozled the small Pinoys.
What was in the mind translated terribly into reality: Always, height is might in basketball.
And so, with the mind eaten by fear, it succumbed to intimidation; in no time, it gave up the ghost.
It showed in the hesitation, if not hurried, shots oozing from our ranks like mushrooms sprouting all over.
The Chinese had four 7-footers. We had none.
You fire a shot, but your line of sight is continually blocked by outstretched arms, it destroys your rhythm big time.
Our guards are 5-foot-11 and 6-foot-flat pitted against 6-foot-4s and above and, with our mind gobbled up by palpable surrender, bye-bye, birdie.
Of all nights, why would this one lead to the street of no return, road to perdition, if not Elm Street where killer Freddy lurks?
Gosh, it was the night we chose to be off-duty. All because of fear. Intimidation.
THAT’S IT. Honest, did Kiefer Ravena think he was Steve Curry on Sunday? He fired Ateneo’s last four shots, which he all missed, including a crucial three near the buzzer. Result: La Salle won, 80-76, after trailing by 15 points to make both teams tied for third-to-fourth at 4-3 behind co-leaders FEU (5-1) and UST (5-1) in UAAP men’s basketball.