LONG before the Internet, social media, Tik Tok, Facebook and X, there was Carlos Loyzaga. Those born after 1975, the year the PBA was launched, may not know him but, quite simply, Loyzaga was a basketball icon before there were basketball icons.
If the man played today, he would dominate television coverage, be the favorite subject of team psychologists and fitness gurus, be at the center of a phalanx of assistant coaches, and would be served a diet and nutrition calendar fit for a king of the court. He would be our Michael Jordan.
He was a legend, not only by my reckoning, but by the reckoning of anyone that knows the history of Philippine basketball. The media routinely called him “The Big Difference” before anyone pasted monickers that hardly fit the players those monickers were meant to hype.
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Loyzaga — known to close friends as Caloy and the multitude that adored him— lived up to his. He gave his college, San Beda, the Zamora Cup, a prestigious award given to the team that won, not just one or even two, but three NCAA titles.
When he retired in 1964, at age 34, he left behind a trove of achievements unmatched in the history of Philippine basketball. One proof is his induction to the FIBA Basketball Hall of Fame in 2023. To this day — despite decades of basketball lording it over the country as its primary sport — Loyzaga is the only Filipino player to earn that distinction from the highest world body of basketball based in Geneva, Switzerland.
Another Filipino, Dionisio Calvo, was inducted in 2007, not for achievements on the court, but for coaching and organizing, having helped establish the MICAA locally and the Asian Basketball Confederation, now FIBA Asia.
Yet, for all that Loyzaga has achieved on a personal level and for all the honors he has brought to the country through international competitions, Caloy’s name is, very strangely, not even whispered about in debates over who the GOAT is in Philippine basketball.
Not to put too much of a point to this, but I dare say that when the man’s achievements are set side by side the names of all other local greats — the same names constantly bandied about as the Greatest Of All Time — Caloy would stand as a glistening multi-story edifice beside the shanties below.
Just unfortunately, during the reign of Caloy, there were no social media posts that would go viral over his quite regular gravity-defying leaps, very little film to remind us of his electrifying games, and only a few printed chronicles still around of his nearly absurd game-after-game heroics.
Some may argue that Loyzaga, who was 6-foot-3, played against smaller and less-equipped opponents, but then they forget that the players, who formed the Philippine team with him as anchor and captain, were nowhere as tall as the man himself but, together, shone brightly like no other national team has, not even compared with modern-day teams that brought home FIBA titles and Asian Games trophies.
Just take a look at what the Philippine teams Loyzaga bannered have won: Two FIBA Asia crowns. Four Asian Games titles. Third place in the 1954 FIBA World Championship in Brazil, in a competition featuring teams from the U.S., Brazil, Canada, and France, among others, which is a record that, to this day, no other Asian country has matched.
Loyzaga and his teams made that period golden for Philippine basketball.
And there is, of course, the not so small matter of Caloy Loyzaga leading the Philippine contingent to two Olympic Games: in 1952, when the country placed 9th; and in 1956, when we placed 7th.
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Count, too, that as a player for the YCO Painters in the MICAA, he led his team to 10 straight championships and, at one mind-boggling stage, got his team winning 49 straight games from the years 1954 to 1956. There were also, of course, his years as a college cager when he gave San Beda those three NCAA championships.
As if this was not enough, as coach, he led the Philippine team to the Asian Basketball Confederation championship in 1967.
In his prime, there was no MVP Award, no Best Player of the Game, no Finals MVP or season top scorer. Loyzaga would have swept all these.
Again unfortunately, we don’t have a record of the points, rebounds, assists, and steals that can be credited to him because these were not collated then. But it’s safe to assume he’d have no trouble topping these, or going from No. 1 to No. 2 and back, if records had been kept. To illustrate, consider that in the 1954 FIBA World Cup, Caloy was the second highest scorer overall with a 16.4 point average per game.
And so it feels strange that despite this wealth of verifiable feats, Loyzaga has never once entered the GOAT conversation, an important one ignited by the announcement of the final 10 in the PBA’s 50 Greatest Players.
We respect all the names that have been floating around. There is June Mar Fajardo, who has made the PBA his private playground with a spectacular eight MVPs.
Ramon Fernandez is right up there, too, with his four MVPs and 19 PBA championships. Then there’s Alvin Patrimonio, the very likable chap known to all as “Kap,” who also has four Most Valuable Player awards plus six championships.
And, of course, in the public’s mind is Robert Jaworski, the heart, the soul, the almost-everything for any team he ever played for, from Toyota, Gilbey’s, and most especially,
Ginebra.
I respect all these players and I think they deserve being considered for the honor — now that the GOAT is the big subject in basketball — but I think our experts would have failed if they do not include “The Big Difference” in the conversation.
Do you agree that Caloy Loyzaga should be up for the title of the country’s basketball GOAT? Let us know your thoughts.
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