How Australia Masterplanned The Implosion of Gilas

First, let us get one thing out of the way. The brawl should never have happened. The fans and staff throwing stuff at the Australian players should be barred from all playing venues from this day forth (maybe even prosecuted). The Gilas players should have kept their cool and kept each other out of harm's way.

Because this was exactly how the Australian basketball team wanted things to go. They planned for our team to beat ourselves.

And it all started with the decals. The mind games started early, with the Aussie staff unpeeling the decals off our floor. They've never done that before, so why start now? Because they needed to. They needed to get into the heads of our players, to find a way to ignite the infamous Pinoy temper.



And then there was the layup line confrontation. Such a small thing but it set the stage for the physicality that would follow.

When the game finally started, Gilas was able to keep pace with the Aussie team. By the second quarter, the Aussies (especially Goulding) started with the verbal jabs and the unnecessary taunting. But then again, that's basketball, right?

But as Australia increased their lead, so did their physical play. And slowly but surely, the Gilas players fell into their trap. The first one to succumb was Calvin Abueva, who played wildly and was out-of-control in his short stint on the floor. Then RR Pogoy became Goulding's target. Pogoy is normally a cool fellow but the unexpected smacking from the hot shooting, trashtalking Goulding was getting the better of him.

Finally, with Australia up by 31 and Goulding and Pogoy exchanging several cheap shots, the hostilities boiled over. To be completely fair, in this particular play, Pogoy swung an elbow at Goulding as he passed to Fajardo but missed. Then, both players collided, with Goulding flopping in the hopes of getting an offensive foul called (which the refs called, by the way).

And then, Kickert flew in with an elbow right to the unsupecting Pogoy's face (totally unnecessary and totally dirty) and Gilas imploded.

The next scenes are too chaotic to describe. From Terence Romeo using his crossover quickness to avoid Thon Maker's kick to Jayson Castro leaping high to connect with Kickert's face. It was all just...too much.

So. Now, we deal with the aftermath. Online, there is a lot of vitriol being said about Gilas, Philippine basketball and Filipinos in general. I've read dozens upon dozens of tweets and posts not just from Aussies but also other nationalities calling us "dogs", "monkeys", "third-world", "dirty", and "uncivilized".  

I've also seen fellow Filipinos with less than kind takes. We (let me emphsize the "WE" part) do deserve a big part of the blame. We should have done a better job at keeping our tempers. Of being good hosts. At being the best Gilas version we can be. I get it.

But this team also put everything on the line. Not just their bodies and their efforts but also their time, their passion, their family life, just to put on that uniform. It doesn't excuse what happened in this game but I will not call them names, nor call into question their character. After all, has Jayson Castro  been in any fights before this game? Jayson fricking Castro, Mr. Cool himself?

Something major happened. Australian basketball mindgames happened...and we fell for it.