CHICAGO - It looks like the wonderful folks at Meralco couldn't interpret a clue.
When Justin Brownlee failed to show up for even at least one practice since announcing his signing as the Bolts' naturalized player for its EASL campaign this year, that should have already been a massive red flag.
Between the September 11 announcement of the Brownlee collaboration and Meralco's October 22 season-opening 81-72 loss to the Ryukyu Golden Kings in Okinawa, there were 41 days to nip this thing in the bud.
COLUMN: So where is Justin Brownlee?
Instead, Meralco ignored the warning signs and relied on the unknown, hoping that the Ginebra star import would have a 'come to Jesus' moment and would just suddenly teleport himself within the team.
Well, hope is not a strategy, and when that yearning is misplaced it often leads to tragedy.
LOST AND FOUND.
Brownlee was a no-show again when Meralco fell to the Taoyuan Pilots, 82-72, on Sunday in Taipei.
After previously calling out Brownlee as "unreachable," Meralco coach Luigi Trillo went to Sunday's post-game presser and bitched about the hardship of competing in two tournaments while lamenting Brownlee's non-appearance saying, "he could have helped us here."
As it turned out, according to an X post by Quinito Henson of Philippine Star, Brownlee is stricken with pneumonia. Superman needs to help himself first and antibiotics -- not competing in a league Filipino hoops fans don't care about - are the only prescription to recovery.
So, who looks stupid now for putting in bad light and slinging the guilt card on a player who is dealing with a health crisis?
Meralco.
CLOWN SHOW.
Last time I checked , pneumonia is an inflammation of small air sacs in the lungs, a condition that can lead to chest pain, fever, difficulty of breathing and excessive coughing.
Still, Brownlee should have been able to pick up the damn phone to shoot a text message or call Meralco.
Questions about his professionalism aside, Justin has earned a little leeway. He is, after all, a national treasure that helped the Philippines mine gold at the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games and the 2023 SEA Games in Cambodia.
People and institutions react differently to adversity. Sadly, Meralco opted to turn the Brownlee brouhaha into a clown show. But nobody found it amusing.
My sense is that long before this pneumonia thing popped up, Brownlee probably had second thoughts wearing a PBA uniform other than Ginebra's and that he was just too polite to tell Meralco and too mortified to back out of the deal,
The missed practices and the pair of no-shows provided the trail of cold feet.
But Meralco, despite the immense brain power in its top brass, failed to read the tea leaves.
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