NBA fever hits LA; Eagles stint in Vancouver

LOS ANGELES, California – I watched game three of the NBA best-of-seven Western conference series between the Los Angeles (LA) Lakers and the Denver Nuggets last Saturday evening (Sunday morning in Manila) in two parts: the first quarter at the Montebello home of Oscar and Lucila Dypiangco (former teacher at St. Theresa’s College and our Pampanga province mate) and the whole fourth stanza at “Gladstones 4 Fish,” a destination restaurant noted for its world class seafood along the Pacific Coast Highway, one mile south of Malibu and six miles north of downtown LA.

In a scene that was undoubtedly replicated in bars, restaurants and lounges all over the world, especially in LA and Denver, I watched an obviously partisan hometown crowd wildly cheering on, complete with loud clapping and fist-pumping, the Lakers who trailed for most of the game. The Lakers stopped the Nuggets, 103-97, behind the heroics of Kobe Bryant, ( 41 points, six rebounds and four assists), Pau Gasol who contributed 20 markers and Trevor Ariza who came up with another steal off an inbound Nuggets play during a crucial moment, thus taking a 2-1 lead in the series. Game four is on Monday (this morning in Manila) at the Pepsi Center.

Watching the restaurant crowd proved to be just as interesting as watching the game on TV. Even the Gladstone waiters would occasionally glance at the monitor in between serving Gladstone’s hundreds of guests which included table-pounding women who groaned at every Laker miscue or Nugget basket.

As expected, the Los Angeles Times was ecstatic over the victory, with Mike Bresnahan writing, “It was arguably the biggest game in Denver Nuggets history, played out in front of a piercingly loud crowd that hadn’t seen a Western Conference finals home game in 24 years. One problem though, the Lakers weren’t bothered... and they (Lakers) survived the altitude, the attitude, and the exhaustion. It was their night, indelibly.”

To be sure this NBA season is turning out to be one of the most dramatic (with LeBron James’s last second miracle shot that yanked the Cavaliers out of a potentially disastrous 0-2 deficit in their own Eastern Conference series with the Orlando Magic and thus levelling the series at 1-all).

The rest of the games, all the way up to the finals, are expected to be tough, physical and highly emotional with the team most physically and psychologically prepared pulling out one squeaker after another.

Back in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, I watched the Ateneo Blue Eagles play the Simon Fraser University (SFU) squad before a crowd of around 1,200, composed mostly of Ateneo alumni and a number of De La Salle alumni at the SFU West Gym two Saturdays ago. The Ateneans visited Vancouver on their way to the Joe Abunassar training camp in LA. Ateneo played SFU in 2007 and lost, 95-88, in that first meeting. Unfortunately, the SFU Clan shot down the Blue Eagles again, 85-77. From where I sat, I thought the game was closer than what the score showed. The Blue Eagles shot 42 percent from the field versus SFU’s 37.9 percent. The two squads were practically even from the three point arc with Ateneo averaging 32 percent and SFU 33.3 percent. It was in the foul shots department that the UAAP defending champions fared miserably, 11 out of 21 or 52.4 percent versus SFU’s 25 of 34 or 73.5 percent.

Despite SFU’s height and heft advantage, Ateneo managed to keep the game reasonably close: the score was tied three times with the lead changing hands five times. Ateneo even led by six points late in the first quarter and managed to hold down SFU which threatened to blow the game wide open by taking a 14-point lead in the fourth period with 7:06 to go.

The crowd included La Salle alumni headed by Gary Jose (president of the De La Salle Alumni Association in British Columbia), Raymond Uy (teammate of Lim Eng Beng in the 1975 championship team of De La Salle in the NCAA), La Salle Bacolod alumni like Peter Villadolid, Christian and Tad Caperonce, Dominic Velez (nephew of former La Salle basketball star, Carlo Gamban), and from LSGH, Bobby Gangoso, Mike Calingo, Joji Villanueva and Raymund Jimenez. Ramci Sanvictores, who earned his MBA from DLSU when I was dean of the Graduate School, was also in attendance.

Former PBA standout Abe King, who drove all the way from the outskirts of Seattle to watch the game, told us that fellow former PBA colleague Rudy Distrito (convicted of manslaughter and now serving time in a Las Vegas jail), may be released in March 2010.