CHICAGO - When the ongoing PBA Philippine Cup begins playoff action this Wednesday, we bid farewell to four who didn't make the eight-team cut.
And fortunately for us PBA fans, we will say goodbye permanently to one franchise that has been complicit in so many lopsided trades that have damaged league parity.
Multiple sources told me Saturday night that the sale of the Terrafirma Dyip to the Zamboanga Valientes is now a "done deal" and that a formal announcement will be made sometime at the end of this All-Filipino conference.
At long last.
While there is a tinge of sadness to this given that some Dyip staffers and management personnel will lose their jobs, this acquisition is for the common good of those who have followed the PBA for years and saw how the league has regressed.
For most of their 11-year existence in the PBA, Terrafirma had drawn the ire of hoops fans for foolishly - perhaps maliciously - trading its top assets to the rich teams including CJ Perez, Roosevelt Adams, Jordan Heading, and Jeremiah Gray, to name a few.
The last straw was handing over Stephen Holt and Isaac Go in a silver platter to Ginebra last July 2023 in exchange for two aging stars, Stanley Pringle and Christian Standhardinger, and an ancillary piece.
Naturally with a perennially talent-starved lineup, winning wasn't the Dyip's strongest suit. In fact, they were so great at losing that they once dropped 25 in a row.
Terrafirma became an even more laughable circus as of late. They once played without an import in the Commissioner's Cup and were short of coaching staff personnel at one point when Johnedel Cardel was replaced.
All of the above - lopsided trades, extended losing streaks, and bad imports - are crimes against fair play that gave the PBA a very bad, suspicious look.
A low bar to clear for Zamboanga
Will the Valientes be any better?
Only time will tell, but as we have seen through the years, the Cory Navarro-owned outfit has been competing well and winning overseas.
Having signed several high-profile former NBA players such as Dwight Howard, DeMarcus Cousins, and Mario Chalmers as imports, the Valientes have also shown the financial wherewithal to maintain a PBA team.
Now that the Dyip is about to exit, who's next?
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