In Huddle
Realtors hope to break jinx
By Beth Celis
Philippine Daily Inquirer
DOHA, Qatar—The Sta. Lucia Realtors left Manama, Bahrain keeping the Philippine record intact.
No visiting RP team has ever lost a basketball game in that place to date and the reigning PBA All-Filipino champion upheld that tradition by sweeping its two-game exhibition series.
The Realtors first crushed national champion Muharraq, 77-66, before downing Al Ahli Club, 87-79, in what has been billed as the First Bahrain-Philippines Ambassador’s Friendship Games.
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Here in Doha, the situation is the exact opposite.
Pat Carido, chair of Pibaq (Pinoy Basketball-Qatar), said that since the turn of the century, no Philippine team has ever won against a Qatari squad.
He cites the conquests of the Qatar national team and other Qatar-based commercial squads against a Junel Baculi-mentored PBL selection, the M. Lhuillier squad of Cebu, the PBA’s Red Bull Barakos, the San Miguel-sponsored RP team coached by Chot Reyes and the 1997 UAAP champion De la Salle University Green Archers with now Realtor Joseph Yeo still a member then.
Pat said the games were far from exciting because all of them were lopsided.
“Puro tambak. Double digit parati ang lamang,” Pat said. “But who knows, maybe the jinx will be broken by Sta. Lucia when it goes up against the Qatari national team.”
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The Qatari nationals are made up mostly of tall, naturalized players from Africa. They finished third back-to-back in the 2003 and 2005 FIBA-Asia men’s championship, but dropped to seventh in Tokushima last year.
“Because of their poor performance in the last FIBA-Asia, the team is currently undergoing a massive buildup and rigid training program to get back in contention,” said Rhea Navarro, recently appointed general supervisor of the Qatari Basketball Federation.
Rhea added that the Qatari nationals are eyeing a slot in the 2008 World Championships in Turkey. They are attending a camp there this September and will compete in the Stankovic Cup in Kuwait this October.
“For sure Qatar will take this series versus Sta. Lucia very seriously,” Rhea said.
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Realtor Denok Miranda had a happy reunion with his close kin here in Doha where his father works as an electrician at Qatar Petroleum.
Ever since he was a small boy, Denok said his father has been working abroad—27 years all told. Ten years in Saudi Arabia and 17 years in Qatar where the whole family, except for another sister, is now based.
"Going out of the country is no option for me. None of us even considered it. Everyone in the family knew my career plans involved basketball,” Denok said.
When the Sta. Lucia Realtors visited, Denok’s mom was on vacation with his sister in Manila.
Denok was also with the San Miguel Corp.-sponsored RP team that played against the Qatar national squad last year.
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I never got to talk with PBA legend Big Boy Reynoso nor was he able to join the Legends Reunion in California last March. Big Boy at the time was confined in the intensive care unit of a Sacramento hospital where he was under observation for internal bleeding of unknown origin.
Since visitors were limited, only Sonny Jaworski, Francis Arnaiz and Abe King got to see him in the hospital.
He was in a bad condition at the time with the cause of the hemorrhaging still undetected. We left for Los Angeles after that and I never heard of Big Boy again.
Until some new acquaintance in the Gulf called him overseas to check on his condition. I found out that Big Boy had coached in Bahrain back in the ’80s and had developed long-standing friendships with some Filipinos based there.
What was surprising was that they were still in touch with the cager who, by this time, had been discharged from the hospital and has completely recovered.
“It turned out I didn’t have a stroke, contrary to what the doctors suspected at first. They found out that what was causing the bleeding was an anti-coagulant drug I was taking,” Big Boy said.
Source:
http://sports.inquirer.net/inquirersports/inquirersports/view/20080828-157258/Realtors-hope-to-break-jinx-----
