A book on Philippine basketball’s “years of glory” is out very soon.
In 352-plus pages, including never-before-seen photos of our first basketball Olympians, “When We Were Champions” takes readers to where the action is: from the locker room conversations to the jammed arenas, immersing us in the heroics and occasional foibles of past Filipino hard-court greats, Charles Borck, Ambrosio Padilla, Jacinto Ciria Cruz, Rafael Hechanova, Carlos Loyzaga, Antonio Genato, Loreto Carbonell and Badion Badion among them.
It comes out a half-century after the Philippines last played in Olympic basketball (1972 Munich), and nearly four decades after the country last won an Asian championship (1986 FIBA-Asia).
The author, Noel Albano, was a former editor and sportswriter before becoming one of the respected political writers of his generation.
All stories are compelling and sometimes rhapsodic.
The author boldly lays out his thesis, in the process unveiling our past of glorious feats, as well as epic blunders that set back our progress while the game grew in spurts globally.
Deeply researched and stylishly written, the book pulls you in, taking readers on a cosmic fly-by of long-forgotten decades of the misty past. What it does marvelously, which makes us all proud, is recreate the scenes of our past triumphs in a panoramic canvas, bringing to life mostly heroes and occasional villains back when Filipinos were near-invincible champions of Asia and a world basketball power.
Albano does it with a lyrical prose that’s never flagging in its energy and its ability to astound. His eye for detail and gift of story-telling combine to deliver the most ambitious attempt to bring to modern basketball fans the greatest exploits of the greatest teams that wore the national uniform in the Olympics, world championship, the Asian Games and FIBA-Asia, formerly the Asian Basketball Confederation (ABC) tournament.
“It brings the past to the present, and fills a yawning gap that seemed unbridgeable for decades. As the first work of its kind, it captures the nuances, the low moments and spurts, the glories and heartaches of the Filipinos’ long romance with basketball,” says the Foreword written by Ray Roquero.
