A boost for Asian hoops

The other day, I attended the media launch of Nestle’s line of nutritional powdered drinks and joined celebrities Zsa Zsa Padilla, R. J. Jacinto, Tessa Prieto-Valdes and Ruby Gan in talking about Boost at the One Canvas building on Chino Roces Avenue, Makati. Believe me, I’ve tried three Boost variants – Energis for vitality, Mobilis to strengthen joints, muscles and bones and Optimum for immunity and overall health – all in vanilla flavor, and they’re not only delicious but also extremely nutritious with a load of high-quality protein, vitamins and minerals, including calcium and vitamin D. I’m convinced I wouldn’t be able to do the things I do, like play squash, average 14,000 steps a day on my FitBit and stay active without Boost.

During the launch, I met Paul Bruhn, an Australian who’s the regional business head of Asia, Oceania and Africa, for healthcare nutrition of Nestle Health Science based in Singapore. Apart from learning more about Boost, I found out Paul is quite involved in basketball, a sport we both love.

Paul’s son Will, 15, is a 6-1 1/2 point guard and still growing.  His son was one of 10 boys selected to represent Singapore at the Jr. NBA camp in Shanghai last year. The Grade 9 student survived six weeks of Sunday training and a three-day camp to book a ticket to China.

Paul is on the board of the Adelaide 36ers, one of eight teams in Australia’s premier National Basketball League (NBL) whose majority owner is millionaire Larry Kestelman. Paul said starting in the 2017-18 season, the NBL will open its doors to one Asian import for each team aside from two “regular” imports. Filipinos, particularly point guards, should be able to land jobs in the NBL with the evolving emphasis of “small” lineups in the global game. The NBL window is clearly a “boost” for Asian basketball.

Paul said last season, the 36ers signed up 6-7, 19-year-old Terrance Ferguson who played high school in Dallas and was the MVP of the Nike Hoop Summit. Ferguson played on the US team at the 2013 FIBA U16 Americas Cup in Uruguay, the 2014 FIBA U17 World Cup in Dubai and the 2015 FIBA U19 World Cup in Greece. He was heavily recruited by over 20 Division I schools, including North Carolina, UCLA and Wake Forest, and initially committed to Alabama. Ferguson later withdrew his commitment to Alabama and switched to Arizona but eventually backed out from playing college ball to go to Australia.

“I don’t know if it’s an emerging trend but some high school players are now looking to play overseas for a year instead of going one-and-done in college then applying for the NBA draft,” said Paul. “If a high school player really has no intention to stay in college, why deprive another student of a scholarship by making the player enrol for a year?” With a year’s experience in the NBL, Ferguson is now making himself available for the NBA draft. Two other players who skipped college and played overseas for a year before joining the NBA draft were Brandon Jennings and Emmanuel Mudiay.

Ferguson didn’t make waves in the NBL, averaging 4.6 points, 1.2 rebounds and 15.2 minutes in 30 of 31 games, but the experience of playing against veterans will go a long way in getting him ready for the NBA or the NBA D-League.

Ferguson said Australia will find it difficult to enlist its NBA players for the national team under FIBA’s new competition system because of conflicts in schedule. Australia, Japan, Chinese-Taipei and the Philippines are in the same bracket for the Asia/Pacific home-and-away qualifiers for the 2019 FIBA World Cup starting in November. For the FIBA Asia Cup in Lebanon on Aug. 8-20, Australia is in the same bracket as Japan, Chinese-Taipei and Hong Kong.

Australian Boomers national coach Andrej Lemanis recently announced a 20-man pool from which to pick 12 players for the FIBA Asia Cup. NBA players like Matthew Dellavedova, Patty Mills, Aron Baynes, Ben Simmons and Dante Exum are not in the roster. Only three veterans of the Rio Olympics are in the cast, namely Chris Goulding, David Andersen and Kevin Lisch. Also in the lineup are Lithuanian league import Ben Madgen and Belgium league import Clint Steindl.

Paul said he’s never been a huge boxing fan but in Singapore, he recently witnessed an amateur event and was impressed. Since amateur boxing emphasizes skill more than hurting an opponent with power shots, Paul said his eyes were opened to the art and science of the fight game. Curiously, Paul said one of his Melbourne neighbors was former IBF superfeatherweight champion Barry Michael who reigned in 1985-87. He said like Manny Pacquiao’s impact as a Filipino hero, Australian fighters of different ethnic origins inspire support from a wide cross section of fans. An example is Jeff Fenech who is of Maltese descent. The former world bantamweight, superbantamweight and featherweight champion was a hero to Australians of various roots.

Paul said he’s excited that Pacquiao will stake his WBO welterweight title against unbeaten Australian challenger Jeff Horn in Brisbane on July 2. A sellout crowd of 55,000 is expected to pack the SunCorp Stadium for the match. Brisbane will host the track cycling event of the 70-nation Commonwealth Games set in the Gold Coast, Queensland, next year so the Pacquiao fight is a prelude to a historic chapter in Australian sports history.

Paul, a Master’s degree holder from the Melbourne Business School, has worked as an expatriate since 2003, moving from Switzerland to Canada to Singapore. Since relocating to Singapore in 2012, he has closely followed the progress of Singaporean basketball especially as the national coach is Australian Frank Arsego and another Australian Michael Johnson is involved with the Singapore Slingers. Both Arsego and Johnson are Paul’s friends.