"I would rather look at a country and have excellence in one sport than have so many programs in place and have no excellence," Burton told The STAR. "Later on, it will give the country or city a place of recogniation, and perhaps other sports will also benefit."
Burton, who is in the Philippines to conduct sports marketing workshops for the PBA and business students, can see that our passion for basketball is overwhelming. Perhaps that should be the best place to start.
"Let’s say that there are 50 million Filipinos to choose from," he begins. "And one percent of those are males who could play basketball. That’s fifty thousand young men. And let’s say you have one percent of those above 6-2. That’s a pool of five hundred. With the proper training and exposure to big camps abroad, any one of them could break into the big leagues and open the door for the rest to follow."
However, two things must fall into place for that to happen. First, there must be a firm, proper coaching system at the grade school and high school level. And there must also be a system to funnel the talent upwards.
"I think that there’s already great coaching at the professional level here. But you’d have to develop the coaching from the grade school programs onwards. That would give you the consistency," he says. "Then, you have to have a feeder system to get the kids into a program where they will get advanced training and exposure to college basketball. There are schools in the United States wherein they feed their players into junior college and college basketball programs, and it’s been pretty successful."
Although it seems exclusionary, some countries have already forsaken other sports to concentrate on being a world power in one. Japan, for example, has set its sights on becoming the world’s best soccer nation.
"The J Village in Japan will blow your mind," said Burton, who was afforded a rare opportunity into that country’s spanking new and massive training facility during a speaking engagement there. "The government has decided to throw money into creating a training center for soccer, and they’ve built over a dozen indoor and outdoor fields. There are different surfaces and temperatures. And they can also adjust the noise level to simulate playing before huge crowds, so the players learn to concentrate."
The Philippines would do well to emulate Australia. We used to beat them silly about twenty years ago. As late as four years ago, the Australian Institute of Sport sent its junior team, here, and they beat the Philippines’s best club teams by at least thirty points each night.
One of the keys is identifying children who may be potential basketball players. Burton says that, in one country, they posted signs nationwide with graphs estimating a child’s adult height from his present size. If a child fits a certain profile, he is encouraged to seek out their basketball training center. There, he will be given all the training needed to become a great basketball player.
Furthermore, if we can bring in the world’s top talent like Tiger Woods, Shaquille O’Neal, Jobe Bryant and others, we can develop Manila or the country as a whole into a top sports event destination. There is no reason that this can’t be done, Burton says.
"All you have to do is make sure that the intended visitors have the assurance that it will be a good experience for them, they’ll have a great time and that it’s perfectly safe," he adds. "There is no reason why Manila can’t be that happening place."
All this will bring more heroes to the fore.
"Great athletes may not be necessarily great people," Burton clarifies. "But, in that monent when you score the winning points or make the free throw that wins the game, you give people a glimpse of being the best. For that moment, you are the best at what you do, and most of us aspire for that. With its natural relationship with radio and television, this creates heroes for the masses, and memories that become part of our personal history."
The one thing stopping the Philippines from becoming a world sports power is lack of political will. Does the government really want to focus on an endeavor that will improve the health of its citizenry, bring down costs of medical benefits, create inspiring moments, and feed our psyche.
And this comes back to the question this column constantly asks: do we really want it?