Liga

I’m turning 48 in a month or so. Funny how growing old brings back lots of memories. In my case, thanks to a month now of the Enhanced Community Quarantine because of the Novel Corona Virus (COVID 19), I’ve actually been reminiscing about the glory (not) days of my youth when I was doing what a lot of kids then, now, and in the foreseeable future will, do: playing street league basketball.

Ah yes, the Liga, as it is more popularly known, that rite of passage that every Filipino boy goes through as soon as he learns to pound a cheap basketball on the pavement, which eventually brings him to the community playground or “paraiso”, as we called it back in downtown Manila where I grew up.

You first learn the game playing with the boys your age, around the old neighborhood, all your childhood buddies, your cousins and other boys in and around the block. You all started with the makeshift courts made of wood, normally slapped together by the men of the place, or the much older boys. You’d start with the old Michael-brand mini basketball sold cheap all over the city. As you grew older and stronger, and you got used to your body and all the movements of the game, you of course moved up to playing against the men, learning all the tricks by taking your lumps. You don’t want to get hurt, take up another sport.

Bruises, sprains, the odd lump or scrape, sometimes the occasional fisticuffs, were all part of learning the game in the street. Learning the game was part of the initiation into manhood, at least back then. Only real men played the game, and played it tough, and gave back as much as they took, and you made sure to never lose your temper, “ang pikon, talo” as the men always said. You learned if you got into a good player’s head you could actually make him lose his focus and lose his game.

Finally you joined the Liga, the community and street leagues, where you could test your mettle against boys and men from other neighborhoods. Some of them would even be clear from another part of town, maybe even another city, the “dayo”, who wanted to beat you as much as you wanted to beat them. It was a point of pride for the local boys to always show the visiting teams you can and will defend your homecourt, not in my house indeed.

Anybody who ever made a name for himself in the pro leagues, whether in our PBA, or in the global NBA, or the Euro-Basket leagues, all made their start in the Liga. Without the Liga, it is no exaggeration to say that there would be no superstars, and the game would not be what it is today. Roi Sumang was playing in a Liga before we got him recruited into the University of the East, where he blossomed into the King Warrior of his time. Don Trollano was playing in a Liga in Laguna before he made a similar journey that eventually saw him becoming a star for Adamson University. Both of them are still playing in the PBA as of this writing. And they are only two examples of a long line of pro league mainstays who all had their humble beginnings in the Liga.

I remember the time I played in my first Liga, and it was during a summer vacation. I was on a team with friends and neighbors, back in the 20th century, before the Internet was a thing, and pictures where captured on rolls of film. I played forward, although nobody really gave a thought to positions in a Liga. You all just happened to be teammates, all wearing the same uniform, and if you were lucky it included the shorts and not just the jersey top. I had bad hands but I had a thick and heavy-set body and I could gobble up rebounds easily while protecting the lane against cutters and the low blocks against guys posting up.

We went all the way to the Finals but came up short against a better, taller team from the next block. We all knew each other, and after the game, in spite of all the jostling and yapping (we didn’t call it trash talk back then, and chippy was a snack food, not you getting hot under the collar with an opposing player) we shook hands and showed respect and sportsmanship when the final buzzer sounded and we were on the wrong end of an 11-point championship defeat.

That would be the first of many such Liga that I would join. I’d even be a dayo from time to time, even a hugot, or a guy recruited by a neighborhood team to which neighborhood I did not actually belong. It was all part of growing up, making friends, expanding your horizons, seeing what else is out there, what else life has to show to you beyond school and home and your own city block.

You might say the Liga, more than anything else, was, and continues to be, all about growing up.

Photo is from Wikipedia