Part Four: A Test of Wills

To understand how it all went wrong the following season, I’ll have to summarise my credentials at that point. We had just won the UAAP championship after so long, I was part of the Mythical Five with Don and Ren-Ren. I went to the PBL, we won the championship with Welcoat again, I was in the Mythical Five; I mean, in the second team was Jimwell Torion(!) I had good teammates and I’m the sort who becomes a better player with good teammates. Game 1 of the PBL Finals, I was named best player after I scored 25 points. Game 2, I only scored five points but my three pointer was the winning shot; we were down two points against Red Bull and we won the championship in five games.

Then there was the Battle of the Champions tournament against Chris Calaguio and Kerby Raymundo of Letran, the NCAA champions. But along the way we played UV (University of the Visayas), and all the other schools. I remember in the final game I scored 21, had double-digit assists, five steals and we won …

Part Three: Victory Rituals

As we started getting used to the way Franz wanted us to play, we felt pretty confident and strong. We only lost twice in that 1998 season, both times against UST. We swept the first round though, so come the Final Four, the entire league was so scared of the “Big Three,” that was me, Don, and Ren-Ren. There was a reason for that: Don was number one in stats, I was number two, Ren-Ren was number three. Those were the best times for me stat-wise; I averaged double-doubles, assists and points, then led the league in steals. Basketball was fun with those guys because we were winning and winning.

We ended up number one, but UST beat us in the first game of the Final Four. You can just imagine how scary it was because the jinx came back. On paper, UST was weak compared to us; five of our players were in the PBL, three of us were in the PBL Mythical Five – then we lose the first game!

All of us were dead scared. I remember in the dugout, we were dead scared and thinking it’s going to happen again. I remember …