CHICAGO - While attempting to uncover the truth behind the firing of Gilas Pilipinas head coach Tab Baldwin yesterday, I had a religious experience.
Everybody I spoke to channeled Pontious Pilate and washed their hands.
"Crazy, here we go again, getting me involved. More than funny, it's malicious," said Ricky Vargas, chairman of the PBA board and a top deputy of Manny V. Pangilinan.
The 69-year old Vargas, a PLDT executive who once served as president of both the Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) and the Association of Boxing Alliances in the Philippines (ABAP), vehemently denied that his fingerprints are on the knife currently lodged on Baldwin's back.
"How can that be? I have nothing to do with SBP and or Gilas program," he asserted.
I believe him, wholeheartedly.
As for coach Chot Reyes, heir to the Gilas throne, I can't find a smoking gun, which doesn't mean said gun doesn't exist.
Asked if he had been eyeing Tab's job since reclaiming the top post at TNT Tropang Giga, Chot replied: "You've been told wrong."
He then narrated how the chain of events transpired.
"Chairman MVP informed me over the phone last Saturday night that coach Tab told him he was stepping down so he could concentrate on his Ateneo coaching job. I was invited to a meeting the following day and that's when the role was offered to me."
So, let me get this right.
Baldwin, a brilliant mind with a work ethic that borders on the compulsive, supposedly cannot juggle Gilas and a college job but Chot can oversee our national team while also lording over a PBA team with perennial championship expectations?
I BEG YOUR PARDON, BUT I DON'T HAVE SPARE, BROKEN LOGIC TO BUY INTO THIS NONSENSE.
A former assistant coach at Gilas told me that Tab Baldwin did not resign.
Doing so, he explained, is tantamount to quitting, which means Tab voluntarily relinquishes all the money owed to him in contracts. One doesn't have to be a labor or contracts lawyer to know that such a move is bad business.
Why do you think we never ever hear of an NBA coach resigning his position?
Because they all want to be fired and paid, and deservedly so.
Call him arrogant or distant, but Tab ain't stupid to just leave that pile of money he worked so hard to earn.
The Gilas gig, I am told, rakes in roughly $12,500 a month and when bonuses and incentives are included the pay can balloon to as much as $25,000, the reported take Tim Cone gets from Ginebra.
Tab keeps mum
Sorry to digress but SMC sports director Alfranchis Chua is really sold on that stale triangle offense Cone is selling because he is giving Tim all the gin in the distillery while Chito Victolero is coaching for scraps while doing so much more with so much less star power and payroll on his Magnolia roster.
Well, at least, nobody can ever accuse the SMC group of treating their foreign coaches unfairly.
Anyway, Tab, I am made aware, is keeping mum because he is not the "confrontational type" and is "processing" what the hell just happened.
As for what the future holds?
No sweat at all.
Tab doesn't fear adversity, he conquers it. And he isn't afraid of losing a job, either. Jobs will come find him.
At the end of the day, this was our country's loss.
We had a coaching gem who provided not just a ray of hope but a sunlight of accomplishments for our national team.
Sadly, strangely, the SBP let him go and turned what was Hollywood into Hollywacky.
Why?
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