NBA blog squad

Since I was invited by the National Basketball Association (NBA) to contribute to its blog site on nba.com a few weeks ago, I’ve sent in two stories. One was about tattoos in the NBA and the second was on the league’s winningest coach Lenny Wilkens.

My third installment will be on former Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) imports playing in the NBA this season.

For the record, I’m not being paid dollars for contributing to the blog site. I’m not being paid, period. It’s an honor for a Filipino to be recruited to join the NBA Blog Squad made up of writers, coaches, players and celebrities who are asked to share their views on the league in the website. The work is purely on a "gratis" basis. Among the regular bloggers are former Orlando Magic coach Doc Rivers, former Women’s National Basketball Association star Rebecca Lobo and Chicago Bulls guard Jay Williams.

What’s mind-blowing about writing for the blog site is its incredible global reach. The NBA website is easily the world’s most visited sports destination with about 58 million hits and six million unique loggers on the average each month.

The Philippines ranks No. 8 among the top 10 countries outside the US visiting nba.com. There are five Asian countries in the list–No. 1 China, No. 3 Taiwan, No. 4 Hong Kong, the Philippines and No. 9 Japan.

Within minutes of deploying your blog, it becomes available for viewing on the website. As many as nine bloggers were listed last week.

Jaime Bass, coordinator for international programming of NBA Entertainment, said yesterday the NBA Blog Squad box on the website will be reformatted.

"Instead of updating it each time an entry is added, it will instead be used to promote newer or currently relevant entries," he explained. "For example, for your entry on Wilkens, it might say, ‘And look what Joaquin Henson from the Philippines has to say about Lenny Wilkens’ or something like that. Since the nba.com home page will not indicate every time you add a new entry, we could try to encourage fans to check the Blog Squad index page regularly."

Bass said the nba.com staff updates the home page manually every day.

In case you didn’t see it, here’s the Wilkens story on nba.com.

"The announcement of Lenny Wilkens making a comeback to coaching at the New York Knicks helm reminded me of my first interview with an NBA star when I was still in college in 1972.

"I was the only Filipino student chosen by the US Department of State to join some 10 other Asian students on a two-month educational tour of the US. The tour was a feature of a program called Experiment In International Living and took us to several US schools all over the country.

"I was already a huge NBA fan then. In the Philippines, it was difficult at the time to find US basketball magazines on sale locally but somehow, I managed to get copies from friends abroad.

Occasionally, some magazines made their way to local newsstands where I was usually the first in line. I made scrapbooks of NBA stars, cutting out pictures and news items from newspapers, and produced my own basketball ‘publication’–for my eyes only.

"While on tour in the US, our guide Bob Homans asked if any of us would be interested to meet an NBA star. I immediately raised my hand. We were in Seattle and Bob arranged for a meeting with the Seattle SuperSonics playing coach.

"I’ll never forget the date. March 24, 1972. I was 21 years old with no professional writing experience. The NBA season was ending and Seattle had just conceded a playoff spot to Golden State after Sonic starters Spencer Haywood, Dick Snyder and Don Smith were sidelined, in succession, by injuries. It seemed a bad time to exchange pleasantries with Wilkens but I didn’t pass up thechance of a lifetime.

"I’d hoped to watch the Sonics in action but my arrival in Seattle came a few days before the team played its final home game. It was arranged that Wilkens would be available to meet me at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport 30 minutes before the team was booked to leave for its penultimate regular season game at Phoenix.

"At the waiting area near the departure gate, I spotted 6-9 relief center Pete Cross conversing with Don Kojis. I walked up to Cross and instantly saw my 5-11 1/2 frame dwarfed. Wilkens was by the ticket counter, Cross said, pointing to the playing coach busily collecting luggage tickets for the team. How times have changed–today, teams fly from city to city in chartered or their own planes.

"Wilkens wore a tangerine, long-sleeved shirt with long-pointed collar tips, topped by a knee-length brown African-influenced vest. Imagine someone wearing an outfit like that today — he’d be real hip.

"The fuzzy-haired Wilkens (he had a lot more hair then) spoke with leadership and precision and was most accommodating when I almost rudely took him aside for what turned out to be a 20-minute conversation.""

More on Wilkens tomorrow.