WITH the big leagues such as the UAAP and the NCAA, and even the PBA still in limbo due to the lingering COVID-19 pandemic, the new pro league Chooks-to-Go Pilipinas VisMin Super Cup is certainly a welcome development for players.
This was stressed yesterday by University of the Philippines coach Bo Perasol, who traces his roots in General Santos City, Mindanao.
“Any endeavor which will provide earning opportunities for basketball players, coaches, team utility people, and the like is always a welcome development for the industry,” Perasol told Malaya-Business Insight.
“Everyone must lend a helping hand to make these leagues work. It gives direction and inspiration for young aspiring ball players,” he added.
The league became the talk of the town for the wrong reasons after two teams — Siquijor and ARQ Builders-Lapu Lapu City — figured in a mockery of a match last April 14 that raised suspicions of game-fixing.
Perasol warned that game-fixing, if and when proven, could destroy the VisMin Cup.
“It is why game fixing in any form is an anathema to this objective,” Perasol said.
“It is not just a disrespect to the game, to the management, and to the league, but also to yourself and to your family.”
Having coached former Fighting Maroons star Paul Desiderio and Jun Manzo, Perasol maintained players like them who came from the provinces will do anything to prove they have what it takes.
“They are both naturally competitive. Owing, probably, to the fact that they see basketball as an aspiration for their respective lives,” he said. “They will do whatever it takes to get where they would want to be.”
Desiderio is playing for Blackwater, while Manzo was also chosen by the Bossing in last month’s rookie daft.
The fate of the Mindanao leg of the VisMin Cup remains hanging in the air, for now.
Despite the appeal for reconsideration of Chooks-to-Go president and sports patron Ronald Mascariñas, whose firm is sponsoring the league, Games and Amusements Board chairman Baham Mitra said the league is still under the microscope.
In a blatant travesty of the sport that Filipinos treat as a religion, players muffed free throws and botched open lay-ups, with the Heroes’ Rendell Senining shooting free throws with his left and right hand on separate occasions, both of which he badly missed.
Mystics players Joshua Alcober, Ryan Buenafe, Jan Penaflor, Gene Bellaza, Michael Calomot, Frederick Rodriguez, Jopet Quiro, Isagani Gooc, Miguel Castellano, Juan Aspiras, Peter Buenafe, Vincent Tangcay, and Michael Sereno have been banished from the league, including their coach Joel Palapal and his staff.
Castellano and Sereno were later spared from sanctions since they were not present in the match at the Alcantara Civic Center in Cebu.
