There is a particular moment in every Filipino basketball game when somebody on the sidelines becomes a coach. It does not matter if the game is in the PBA, UAAP, NBA, or a barangay court with one hoop, a cracked backboard, and a dog wandering underneath it. Somebody always knows what the team should be doing. “Pass!” “Box out!” “Take the shot!” “Why is he still playing?” It is not necessarily criticism. It is participation.
We Filipinos have perfected the art of watching sports as though the outcome depends on our personal involvement. We do not simply follow a game. We analyze it, second-guess it, discuss it with people who did not ask, and occasionally explain the obvious to somebody who has been playing the sport professionally for 15 years. And the internet has made all these considerably easier.
Once upon a time, an ordinary fan had a television, a newspaper, and perhaps a cousin who knew somebody who knew somebody else in the team. Today, a fan can find a player’s shooting percentages before the next possession, watch a replay from six different angles, and discover a 47-post argument on social media about whether a timeout should have been called. The professionalization of fandom is complete. Everyone has statistics. Everyone has video. Everyone has a theory. And everyone has apparently watched enough basketball to qualify for the coaching staff.
This is not necessarily bad. Sports are more interesting when people understand them. The rise of analytics, advanced statistics, and readily available video has given fans tools that previous generations could only dream about. But there is also a small danger in knowing more numbers. Numbers can explain what happened. They do not always explain why. And this is where a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
A player can shoot 2-for-11 and still have played an important role. A guard can finish with five points and control a game without producing a spectacular highlight. A team can lose despite doing many things correctly. And sometimes, remarkably, the other team is simply better. This last possibility is often the hardest one to accept. We would rather blame the referee, the coach, the substitution patterns, the defensive schemes, the flight schedule, the officiating crew, the humidity, or Mercury being in retrograde.
Sports encourage this because there is always another explanation available. It is part of their charm. Nobody watches a game merely to know the final score. We watch because we want to understand it. We want to know why a team won, why another lost, why a player suddenly became brilliant, and why the coach decided to leave his go-to guy on the bench for what seemed like seven geological ages. Then we discuss it. At work. In the comfort of home. Online. While having dinner. And sometimes with people who have absolutely no interest in the subject.
This may be the most Filipino part of being a sports fan. We don’t necessarily need to be involved in the game to feel that we are part of it. We just need a television, a phone, a basketball court nearby, and the chutzpah to say: “I told you they should have passed the ball.”Even if nobody remembers you saying it before the play. Especially then.
Life Sport is a commentary from Anthony Cuaycong, publisher of Context.ph and a lifelong sports fan who follows most things involving a ball, a racket, or an unreasonable amount of arguing. He considers himself a reasonably informed fan, although his family remains unconvinced that watching sports qualifies as work. His views are entirely his own, including the ones he later wishes he had kept to himself.
