Insult to Jones’ memory

Renato William Jones is revered as one of FIBA’s founding fathers and its first Secretary-General who served from 1932 to 1976. He was responsible for bringing basketball to the Olympic calendar in 1936 and elected to the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame in 1964 and FIBA Hall of Fame in 2007. In his honor was created the Jones Cup, an annual international invitational tournament in Taiwan, in 1977. The Philippines has been a regular entry in the Jones Cup, winning the title with Northern Cement under coach Ron Jacobs in 1981, San Miguel Beer under Jacobs in 1985, Philippine Centennial team under coach Tim Cone in 1998, Smart Gilas under coach Chot Reyes in 2012, Mighty Sports under coach Bo Perasol in 2016, Mighty Sports under coach Charles Tiu in 2019 and Strong Group Athletics under Tiu in 2024 and 2025. Through the years, the Jones Cup attracted different US teams to participate, including an All-Star squad under coach Gene Keady, St. Mary’s University with Ali Peek, Vanderbilt University, University of Hawaii, Athletes In Action, national teams from various countries and clubs from around the world. It gained a reputation as a prestigious competition and players from all over looked forward to joining.

The traditional tournament format was a simple round-robin with the team posting the best record to win the championship. No playoffs were involved. But this year, something strange happened. Without notifying entries beforehand, organizers decided to seed Chinese-Taipei A into the semis regardless of its elimination record. Group A was made up of SGA, Wonju DB Promy of Korea, Japan and Chinese-Taipei A. Group B was composed of University of California at Irvine, Chinese-Taipei B, Jordan and Malaysia. As it turned out, Wonju and SGA finished with identical 5-1 records in the double-round elims but Korea took pole position with a higher quotient. Chinese-Taipei A had a 1-5 mark.

At the 1978 FIBA World Cup, host Philippines was seeded into the eight-team semis but didn’t play in the group stage. The Philippines ended up winless. In this year’s Jones Cup, Chinese-Taipei A played in the group stage, finished last but still went to the semis. Organizers later apologized to SGA for the injustice but this was a contrived conspiracy of unfair play. No apology can brush this misconduct away. It was a travesty. The top two finishers in Group B advanced to the semis but in Group A, only Wonju qualified to make way for Chinese-Taipei A at SGA’s expense.

SGA’s coach Tiu, seeking a three-peat, said if he had known about the rule change, his strategy would’ve been different. “If we knew, it would’ve changed everything,” he said. Tiu called SGA’s only loss to Wonju an aberration. “We started flat plus we weren’t complete yet as (Ian) Miller wasn’t with us then,” he added. “When we were down, we kept thinking quotient and when we knew the game was going to be lost, we decided to rest the guys as we were playing three games in a row and we figured we could be No. 2 in our group. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.” Wonju beat SGA by 32 in their first encounter than SGA returned the favor and won by 26, falling short of a higher quotient by six points. SGA crushed Chinese-Taipei A by 43 but it was the host team, not SGA, that advanced to the semis. How cruel was that to SGA? Jones must have rolled in his grave. If this is the way organizers treat their entries, boycotting the Jones Cup is the right thing to do.