Heart, guts in game of the year (June 2, 2003)

Recah Trinidad wrote his reflections on Toyota’s victory over Crispa in the 2003 Reunion Game on his regular column for the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Heart, guts in game of the year

BARE EYE
By Recah Trinidad

Philippine Daily Inquirer

Published Monday, June 2, 2003

THEY played the PBA game of the year way, way ahead of schedule.

Nobody had expected it.

In fact, the Crispa-Toyota reunion match was originally conceived as an appetizer, a so-so rematch to raise the curtains for the All-Star weekend.

Whoever altered the Friday night script at the Big Dome, and turned the appetizer into the main event, must be having the biggest laugh of his life.

***

Nobody, indeed, could be happier than the faithful fans of the Big J.

The reporter was right.

Not even Robert Jaworski, who drilled in the game’s most scintillating basket, had ever expected such a fantastic ending.

How Jaworski, who confessed in a pregame talk he was nothing more than 15 (yes fifteen) percent of his old self, again became the neighborhood topic the morning after, is a tribute to the guy’s tenacity.

OK, he walked in as though he had a baby lifesaver under his yellow jersey. He had also lost the handsome muscles on his biceps.

He did not see action all of the first half. He was nowhere on the game floor at the start of the second period, thereby fueling fears he might just sit it out the whole evening.

Who knows, maybe the Big J himself finally agreed to join action midway in the third quarter ready and willing to laugh at himself?

***

But it was not to be so.

Guts and heart again became the theme of the match once the Big J took over, pushing the ball, quick, around to proper recipients.

Jaworski provided singular leadership, a stinging contrast to the Redmanizers who got scattered trying to win all by themselves.

Then came the magical moment, with Mon Fernandez bouncing an assist to Jaworski, perfectly free from top of the key hole.

***

He did shoot another game winner, but that triple by Jaworski could, in a big way, turn into another sure shot for his expected re-election bid as a senator.

Why? Well, there’s no debating that, after the Friday heroics, Jaworski has rekindled his love affair with the basketball republic.

Of course, the first Crispa-Toyota rematch in nearly two decades was also a rekindling of both love and hate.

***

Terry Saldana, reunion game MVP, provided the nasty fireworks when he likened the Redmanizers to slum area cagers. (“Para silang mga squatters, hawak nang hawak at tulak nang tulak.”)

Of course, before that uncalled for valedictory, the Crispa-Toyota game had itself been threatened by on-court violence. And to think that they were fighting it out on the same floor where they rumbled in the early years of the PBA and even landed straight at Camp Crame.

Yes, there seemed nothing much at stake at the start.

But after the stinging loss as they finished second best, the Redmanizers could only groan and cry: Rematch.

***

On the whole, the game among the legendary oldies felt very, very good.

It won’t indeed be an exaggeration to say that the Friday event was the revival of a forgotten faith.

Old fans, maybe slower now on their feet, did not come to watch the reunion game.

They rushed to worship in the old mecca.

And, with the game threatening to get out of hand, thanks to the abundance of heart and guts, who can deny that basketball, in that spectacular Friday, again became a religion?