Lately, my feed has been flooded with the same hot take: “Filipinos need to stop obsessing over basketball and focus on sports where we actually have a shot at winning gold.” People keep pointing to gymnastics, pole vaulting (Carlos Yulo and EJ Obiena), chess, tennis, and whatever else is trending on the global stage.
And look, don’t get me wrong. I support our local athletes 100%. Nanood din ako ng mga laban nila. Heck, I even picked up chess again recently for a change of pace. If we win on the international stage, I’m cheering right along with everyone else.
But here’s where I draw the line: You can’t force someone to love a sport just because the math says we have a better chance of winning.
Natural Talent vs. Actual Passion
If we’re strictly talking about raw potential, I honestly believe I could have gone pretty far in chess if I had started seriously at a younger age. But I don’t sit around regretting that I didn’t become a chess grandmaster.
You know what I do regret? Stopping basketball in elementary school.
Now, let’s be real here: I do NOT have the build for basketball. My height? Average. hand size, wingspan, reaction time? below average. And that’s by Filipino standards! 😆 I was never going to be an elite prospect or a star player in Barangay level.
But I loved it.
I loved the sound of the ball swishing through the net. Even during the years I stopped playing, my love for the game never faltered. I just found other ways to enjoy it, like watching the NBA and playing NBA 2K. My favorite anime? Slam Dunk, hands down 😆. I may have ‘retired’ from playing at age 12, but my passion for the sport never faded.
if only I had just stuck with playing recreationally through my teens and 20s, that pure, unadulterated love for the game would have kept me consistently active, giving me a much healthier body now that I’m in my late 30s.
That’s the part people constantly overlook in this debate.
It Was Never Just About the Gold Medals
Why does every sport in this country need to be measured by whether or not we can produce a world champion?
The end goal of sports culture doesn’t always need to be international glory, Olympic gold, or turning kids into high-earning pros. At its core, sports should exist to foster a healthy population in both mind and body.
Basketball does that for millions of Filipinos every single day. It gets people out of their seats, running, sweating, laughing, and building communities in every single barangay across the country. It doesn’t matter if the hoop is nailed to a coconut tree or a rusty pole in an alleyway. If there’s a ball, there’s a game. That accessibility breeds physical activity, and physical activity breeds health.
You can’t just replace that kind of cultural connection overnight with a sport simply because podium finishes look good on news headlines.
The Greatest Sport in the World
At the end of the day, no amount of social media gaslighting is ever going to convince us that basketball isn’t the absolute greatest sport on the planet. It has the drama, the pace, the strategy, the heart, and the accessibility that hit us right where we live.
Support gymnastics? Absolutely. Cheer for pole vaulting, chess, tennis, and martial arts? 100%.
But don’t tell us to fall out of love with basketball just because we aren’t built like 6’8″ NBA wings. We play it because we love it.
Gusto mag basketball pero wala pang sapatos?
You do not need 10,000-peso signature sneakers just to enjoy a pickup game with your friends. But please, protect your joints and stop playing in tsinelas or barefoot. I found a pair of super affordable basketball shoes on TikTok that are perfect for casual run-and-gun games. If you are looking to get back into playing, [check out the shoes here] and let us keep the hoop culture alive.