WITH the country’s emotion on an all-time high last week when Carlos Yulo etched his name in Philippine history by taking home two gold medals in consecutive nights for artistic gymnastics in the 2024 Paris Olympics, the focus of some people oddly shifted on a different sport altogether – basketball.
Immediately after Yulo’s golden conquest in the vault, it seemed like some Pinoy fans were inspired to vault in their own right as they jumped to conclusions about how defunding basketball should be the next step in improving Philippine sports altogether.
As expected – they failed to stick their landing.
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Basketball fans quickly came to the sport’s defense alongside some of my colleagues in the sports world who mostly pointed out the difference between private and public funding, and how the Gilas Pilipinas basketball program’s been on the uprise over the past year – with a gold medal in the Asian Games to show for.
Further adding to those arguments was how Gilas Pilipinas’ chief backer in Manny V. Pangilingan has also been funding other sports, gymnastics included, as the MVP Sports Foundation even built a gymnastics gym back in 2022, with Yulo even personally attending the ribbon-cutting.
But let’s take it a step further.
Why are we watching sports again?
While those arguments alone would’ve been enough to get a unanimous decision victory in this boxing ring of hot takes, it’s best not to leave the fate of this issue to the hands of the judges, or in this case – the minds of those who still see this even remotely as an ‘okay’ idea.
We move forward by asking the question, why are we watching sports to begin with? Because whichever way we look at it, in the world of sports, interest, attention and support will always intertwine with each other.
So before we try to blurt out our opinions about funding, and which goes to which, we must first answer the question on why we tune in to sports in the first place.
Is it because we expect a certain athlete or team to win something? Because from the sound of it, arguments like “we won’t win medals in basketball so better to fund other sports,” stem from people whose end all, be all in watching sports is to see winners.
If the chances of winning medals – in a quadrennial competition which involves 205 other countries – should be the sole justification that one sport’s funding should be slashed in favor of another, then it creates a very dangerous cycle of pitting the haves against the have-nots in an already uneven Philippine sporting landscape.
Instead of asking why these certain athletes get a lot of funding, our energy should be put into making sure everybody eats at a table where – based on how these politicians and companies eagerly handed out these grand rewards to the winners – food comes aplenty.
So what happens if our gymnastics team fails to follow through on Yulo’s brilliant run, not even because of their own doing, but just because other countries were simply better?
Do we look for another sport to ride on? Or maybe we finally start working together and understand that for sustainability and stability to come, we must continue to put the powers that be on their toes in asking for accountability and transparency with how they handle our national athletes?
What happens when basketball’s funding is already allocated for other sports but it comes at a time where our best bets in those sports also hit a wall? Do we just stop watching sports altogether?
A lot of those questions really circle back to the main query – why do we watch sports?
It goes beyond medals and wins
I watch it for the moments, I watch it for how it makes me feel. I watch it for the heights that it takes me to victory, and the agony that I go through in losses.
The moment I saw Bal David hit that miracle heave from just beyond half-court to respond to a Mike Mustre go-ahead three in a random elimination round game in the 1997 PBA All-Filipino Conference to tow Gordon’s Gin (Ginebra) past San Miguel, I knew I was in love with the sport.
That moment made me move. It made me want to play basketball. Despite all the heartbreaks it entailed of being a Ginebra fan in the early 2000s, it still made me buy tickets to watch the game live when I became older.
And for all the criticism that I've hurled at the PBA, I will always tune in in the hope that it will get better.
The point is, one can’t fault people for loving things that evoke emotions for them. And for as long as fans continue to care, the support will continue to pour.
I shed the same tears of joy when Hidilyn Diaz finally had the golden breakthrough in the biggest stage for all sports in Tokyo as I did when Jimmy Alapag led our national team in ending the Korean curse in the FIBA Asia back in 2013 to win not even gold, but just silver.
Those are two different sports in two events that aren’t even on the same magnitude with results that couldn’t be apart from each other, but the joy that it brought to sports fans like me in the Philippines is all the same – it’s unmeasurable.
That type of emotion is what reactionaries fail to grasp, and is probably the reason why it’s so easy for them to call on defunding something, like it’s the end-all, be-all solution to this funding problem.
So if Hidilyn’s moment of glory in Tokyo made you feel, if Caloy’s golden double in Paris is now forever ingrained in your mind, or Nesthy Petecio and Aira Villegas’ courageous stands in boxing made you want to put on a pair of gloves then that’s perfect – that’s the start of something.
Build on that. Focus on that. Call on for better treatment for our athletes. We’ll be with you. Watch their games and support them. Start caring.
But never put the burden of funding, or lack thereof, on other athletes who had it better. The last thing we want to do is to pit our athletes against each other in a landscape where some of them are even going up against their very own sporting associations.
With great funding comes great responsibility
Anybody who’s followed the men’s national basketball team knows that this team is in a much better place now, which makes calls for it to be defunded really weird.
It’s not as if basketball fans and the press are letting this team off the hook when they fall short, either.
The weight of having such grand funding and attention is being put in a microscope in a country where experts are abundant and fans – in their minds – can almost, always make better decisions than the coaches calling the shots.
Probably the worst Filipino to be around this time last year was Chot Reyes as he was basically bullied both online and on the arena when Gilas lost one game after another in the group stages of the 2023 FIBA World Cup.
Heck, the expectations are so unbelievably high for some that this team that just recently won its first men's basketball gold medal in the Asian Games in six decades was still top of mind when thinking of which sport to defund.
Let’s not act like we’re just letting these boys run freely.
Fans and the media alike have been proactive in letting their criticisms be heard when it comes to questionable decisions.
Perhaps the very reason why basketball has hit the radar of some casual fans is because of how the public has always watched every move of the national team and have been very vocal about it.
This is already the next step for the sport wherein there’s a certain level of expectation now given the funding and the attention that it gets from the government, sponsors and fans.
Pulling them back simply to reallocate their funds for other sports will be a big misstep for a country that honestly do not have a lot of funds to go around to begin with.
We all want better things for our athletes. We want them having the best preparations, the proper meals and the just compensation and reward for the amount of time and effort that they've put in for us fans to simply have these so-called 'moments'. Regardless of which sport.
But it shouldn't come at expense of other athletes, especially in a sport that has given a lot of these special moments for majority of sports fans in the country.
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