World Basketball- Thai Park Hoops

This is the sight I came upon at a local park in Bangkok, Thailand today.

Beside this enclave where some teenagers player Sepak Takraw at 3pm on a Friday, there lay an empty basketball court.

I sat on a nearby park bench on Bensiri Park in Bangkok, a small patch of green adjacent to Emporium Mall and Asok BTS station. As I watched the Sepak Takraw kids go at it, I wondered about whether basketball mattered in a country more preoccupied by Muay Thai and a bit of football.

While surfing the web, I came across the Thailand Tigers of the Asean Basketball league. It turns out that the team's got some imports from other countries, including a couple of Pinoy players and a Pinoy head coach.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang_Thailand_Slammers

The squad apparently also plays games at the Thailand National Stadium near MBK mall in Bangkok.

Good to know that basketball in Thailand is somehow alive, despite its life force seemingly being measurable in short blips. The Philippines, on the other hand, has league after league after league and team after team after team. On top of that, the Land of the Morning has an archipelago teeming with hoops junkies.

Some say, we should do a Thailand and find a sport better suited to the Pinoy physique (like soccer via outfits like the Azkals, or games like, say, Archery or Dragon Boat Racing). Well, Rome wasn't built in a day, and who knows, 'Pinas may be able to lay claim to its own slice of Rome sooner rather than later.

These days, it would seem that wherever I go, my mind would inevitably scream hoops. I scrambled to find a ball at that park yesterday afternoon, as I wanted to be the first (and maybe only) bloke to say cheers to Naismith's calling card, and perhaps, even be laughed at by some locals. I was curious just to have seen how all that would have gone down.

I probably would have won against anybody I had faced at the park that day, not necessarily on sheer physical ability, but more because of desire. Could it be that I had more desire for basketball than anyone else in the vicinity of the park that Friday? Perhaps, but this brings me to my next point- that sports are not won on desire alone. News flash, Juan, that's the real world scenario.

I had permitted my imagination to run mad while waiting for a relative to text me on where to go for supper. Either Bangkok's humid air had gotten to me, or, maybe I had come across something valid. Sport should unite, and not divide.

They loved Sepak Takraw, I loved ballin'. Fair enough.

And off to Manila I go where my hoops heart belongs.

MC