IN the din of the celebration after Gilas Pilipinas' vengeful win over Jordan gave the country its first Asian Games basketball gold medal in six decades, one question kept popping up, not only in our social media pages, but also in our own private messengers.
Did Gilas not punch a ticket to the Paris Olympics by virtue of the Asiad win?
READ: With knockout, Eumir Marcial punches ticket to Paris Olympics
The question, we felt, was triggered by the case of Filipino boxer Eumir Marcial, who, by reaching the finals of the light-heavyweight division, guaranteed himself a return to the Olympics where he won bronze two years ago in Tokyo.
Is it not the same in basketball? our readers asked.
Sadly, it is not.
The Asian Games has never served as an Olympic qualifier for basketball, which, for decades, used the ABC (Asian Basketball Championship), later renamed the Fiba Asia Cup, as the only qualifier for the Games in the region before world basketball body Fiba created its own Olympic Qualifying Tournament (OQT) in 2016.
That was the case in the last two times a Philippine basketball team competed in the Olympics, in 1968 in Mexico (we won the ABC in 1967) and the 1972 Munich Games where the Philippines qualified as the ABC runner-up to Japan.
The rebranded Fiba Asia Cup continued to serve as the qualifier for the Olympics until the 2015 tournament in Changsha, where host China clinched a ticket to the Rio Games while runner-up Gilas (under Tab Baldwin), Japan, and Iran secured berths in the first Olympic Qualifying Tournament.
So you might want to know why did boxing reward Olympic spots to its finalists and basketball did not?
Well, boxing was one of only nine sports that offered quota spots to the Paris Olympics during the Hangzhou Asian Games, the others being hockey, archery, artistic swimming, breaking, modern pentathlon, sailing, tennis and water polo.
Boxing squabble
Boxing has long been part of the Olympic program, but its management has been in a state of disarray for years since June, when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) banished the International Boxing Association from its ranks, although it maintained that boxing would remain part of the Paris Games calendar.
But the good news is, Gilas, although it failed to secure a spot in the Paris Olympics during the last Fiba World Cup (co-host Japan secured a ticket as the best-placed Asian finisher) will be taking part in the 2024 OQT slated in July next year.
READ: Thanks to big win over China, Gilas seals spot in OQT
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