Late last Saturday, we were all thrown off our seats by another horrid shooting on a basketball player. This time, it was Franz Dysam of the Colegio de San Juan de Letran Knights getting shot on the way home from a game, with his live-in partner in tow as well as a three-month-old kid.
At first, it was like, hey didn’t this happen five years ago? Only this time, this wasn’t in the wee hours of the night in front of FEU. And it wasn’t Mac Baracael. It was on the road, caught on the CCTV and it was Franz Dysam. The partner died, we all know that. It was about game fixing and basketball gambling some say? Well, we don’t know that.
What’s ugly is that everybody jumped to that conclusion. Well, it’s not far off. I mean, Joanne Sordan (no I would not say an obligatory God bless her soul because if you truly know what transpired, you can’t say it) worked as a casino financier. Casino. What do you do in a casino? Sit and sip drinks? Of course not. You bet. But the lady isn’t a highstakes roller. The grandma wants to believe that it’s all about gambling, you give her that. But logic states it’s not about it. It was allegedly a love triangle crime, as funny as that sounds. And it is not about game throwing or fixing.
Related: Cops eye love triangle in Letran cager’s shooting
I really can say that with all conviction. How can a guy, who has fallen off from his best playing years and is currently averaging two and a half points per game affect a game so much to merit a game-fixing charge? For crying out loud, he barely hits eight minutes in a game. Or five for that matter! If he fixes a game, well, by God, he fixes his OWN game and reverts to the Dysam of old. But no. It’s not even a shell of his former self. It’s a shell of a shell of a shell. A shell-ception, if you may, of the Dysam Letran has managed to pull out of Perpetual Help’s then-basketball purgatory form.
I do hope this brings to light the case of Mac Baracael. Not that I am trying to draw parallels, but because these two have been both shot and survived to tell the tale. One was obvious. Dysam? Not so much. But it was a crime of hate.
It’s ugliness incarnate in the the sporting world.