MANILA, Philippines - Carlos Loyzaga, long considered as the greatest Filipino basketball player of all time, was honored yesterday by the Philippine Sports Commission which awarded him a plaque of appreciation together with a check worth P1 million.
PSC chair Richie Garcia said the P600,000 of the fund was the bulk of Loyzaga’s uncollected pension while the rest came in the form of cash incentive bestowed by the PSC for the man’s achievements that helped boost the popularity of Philippine basketball.
“Actually, he has about P600,000 uncollected pension money but we rounded it off to P1 million as our way of saying thank you to him for putting the country in the world basketball map,” said Garcia.
The wheelchair-bound Loyzaga, who suffered a stroke three years ago, personally received the award with wife Victoria and daughter Bing.
Loyzaga, known as the Big Difference, was the spearhead of the national team that took the bronze in the 1954 World Championship in Rio de Janerio, Brazil.
Loyzaga also led the national team to four gold medals in the Asian Games in 1951 in New Delhi, 1954 in Manila, 1958 in Tokyo and 1962 in Jakarta and two more gold medals in the FIBA-Asia Championship, formerly Asian Basketball Confederation, in 1960 in Manila and 1963 in Taipei.
Loyzaga is also the only Filipino to make it to the First Mythical Team of the 1954 FIBA Worlds.