SPORTS KEN:  FIBA penalties unfair

 

FRED LUMBA - edge davao
FRED LUMBA – edge davao

If my headline raises eyebrows, it should.

In my book, the FIBA sanctions greatly put the blame on Gilas while the REAL CULPRITS who encourage the game to degenerate into a brawl were the referees designated to officiate the match by the organizing FIBA itself.

I don’t care if my personal perspective is not shared by anyone.

Why should 10 Gilas players and ONLY 3 Australian cagers were cited when both teams cleared their benches which violated established game rules.

FIBA should FIRST sanction its people – including the table officials who should have called the attention of the referees to the already increasing tension in the court.

The FIBA table officials were witnessing a trash talking Goulding who was not censured nor warned by the refs even when RR Pogoy, who was then about to shoot his free throws, approach the Boomer to stop his trash talking mouth which was distracting him (Pogoy).

Elbows, body checks, pushing and shoving were already evident since the opening whistle.

To discourage this barbaric court brutality and to teach every FIBA team a lesson, it would have been better that FIBA suspended both the Philippines and Australia from further participation in the FIBA Asian qualifiers.

You cannot quarrel with and maul yourself. As it takes two to dance a tango, so it takes two to quarrel and brawl.

The suspension – and the monetary penalties – would have sufficed, needing no more effort to particularize the “crime” that each guilty player of each team committed.

For instance, why would Calvin Abueva be meted with a 6-game suspension when Thon Maker, the 7-footer Aussie center, was seen on video leaping high to execute karate kicks and was penalized lesser?

I tell you, politics reared its ugly head anew as it had already in the past.

I must tell you – even the young basketball fanatics who are not in the know – that in the sixties when the FIBA head was a Filipino (Lito Puyat who headed the Basketball Association of the Philippines), Western basketball power was the one wielding authority within the FIBA.

I had it in good confidence that Asian member-countries have a small and tiny voice in the shaping of FIBA policies. They are out-voted during deliberations and it takes extra effort, time and finances to get the attention of Western nations sitting in the FIBA board.

A sweeping suspension from further participation in the current FIBA Asian Qualifiers should have been adequate punishment to all members of each team, including the coaching staff, thereby pointing to no team as the guiltier party.

As far as I am concerned, I insist that the more prominent and grievous error or sin was committed by the FIBA referees and the FIBA organizers sitting as table officials.

The post-game statement of Boomers asst. coach Luc Longley, blaming Gilas mentor Chot Reyes for inciting his boys to hit their opponents, was uncalled for.

Longley, a former NBA veteran who played alongside Michael Jordan, should be the first to acknowledge that basketball being a contact sport, rough and tough games are expected. He, too, has figured in court altercations before.

The SBP, meanwhile, has meekly accepted the FIBA impositions. (Email your feedback to fredlumba@yahoo.com.) Prov. 10:19. “When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise.” GOD BLESS THE PHILIPPINES!

 

 

 

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