MANILA, 15 March — Hair today, gone tomorrow.
Fil-Tongan Paul Asi Taulava, six-feet-nine, strong and very mobile, and, oh, yes, he with long blonde-and-black curls, has just lost one of his most precious possessions in life.
It is priceless in every sense of the word. It would only take another Paul Asi Taulava to possess it. Only he could rightfully own it.
But make no mistake about it because normally it would only take a few weeks, maybe a month the most, for Taulava to reproduce it.
As a matter of fact, it would not even make him touch his fat bank account if only to replace it. And he would not have to hire someone else to search for it.
All he has to do is plain and simple: let Father Time take care of it, go about his daily routine, and learn to wait for it to come back — and wait patiently.
For before he knows it, that God-gifted treasure could be in his possession again, and inevitably out in the open for the public, particularly his big legion of fans across the country, to see it for themselves — literally.
So what’s that priceless possession then, huh?
Well, what else but his hair. Yup, that’s right, his blonde-and-black hair.
No thanks to bosom buddy Davonn Harp, Taulava has just paid the price of having to shave his locks off. And right now, all the curls are gone.
Harp knocked in a Hail Mary shot from beyond the three-point arc to beat the buzzer and lift RP Hapee to a pulsating 65-64 win over Taulava’s RP Selecta just a while back in the two national training teams’ first showdown in the ongoing Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Governors Cup. Truly, it was a thriller of an encounter between the two teams of aspirants for the Asian Games in the Governors Cup eliminations.
So cruel was fate to RP Selecta, which is arguably the odds-on favorite between the two which are using their Governors’ Cup appearance as a preparation for the Asian Games in Pusan, South Korea, in September, that it allowed Harp’s squad escape with the victory in the most unexpected, if not bizarre, way.
And it was up to Taulava to pay the price.
The mammoth slotman who is largely considered as a shoo-in to the Asiad-bound Philippine team had just lost a big wager which cost him his fashionably elegant hair.
“He said he would shave off his precious locks if they lost,” revealed Jeffrey Cariaso, Hapee’s ace slasher who fuelled the team’s searing endgame comeback punctuated by Harp’s close-to-impossible triple with 1.5 seconds remaining.
“Off with the hair,” Andy Seigle kept repeating as he joined a virtual pandemonium on the hardcourt at the sound of the buzzer.
The happy cluster of players after the game gained up on Taulava who had bet he would cut his hair short if lesser-hyped Hapee would win over his Selecta side which had consistently won in their scrimmages.
So he lost the bet — and to go with it was his thick hair.
With the bitter consequence all registered on his mind, Taulava took it all in stride, walking off the noisy dugout with an enigmatic smile written all over his massive face.
Actually, it would have been better if anybody had taken the make-or-break trey that arranged Taulava’s unscheduled date with the hairstylist.
But, hey, not Harp, who could well be the PBA’s own version of Shaquille O’Neal when it comes to shooting bricks from the foul line.
So how would you expect a man who can hardly even make his free throws to have the heart and the guts to take a shot from beyond the trifectaville at a time when the game was on the line, huh?
“There was no more time, and I was not expecting him to make the shot,” said Taulava, breaking into a big juicy laugh, “but he did.”
Rightly so, Harp himself was surprised to have taken the shot — and made it.
“It was fluke shot,” recalled Harp. “I was looking for a foul, but time was running out and I shot it.”
Harp never expected to have the leather still resting on his hands with time running down and the crowd holding their breath and growing impatient waiting for what could be the final sequence to the thriller. Worse, Taulava was all over him.
Stuck from way behind the rainbow area, the Red Bull standout leaned back on Taulava, made one chest-high dribble, and pivoted out of the beanpole’s reach and, with a fraction of a second left, launched an awkward shot he rarely takes that banged into the rim as time expired.
What followed instantly was wild celebration on the hardcourt. The players of Hapee ganged up on Taulava. Rudy Hatfield doing a piggyback ride on him. Some clambered up Taulava’s massively-built shoulders, tugged at his blonde-and-black curls.
Harp and teammate Mick Pennisi took turns in mussing up his hair before removing his headband. The injured Seigle brothers, Andy and Danny, raised two fingers in the air and made a scissors gesture. And the next thing Taulava knew, everybody was saying good-bye to his locks.
Hatfield, the Seigles and Danny Ildefonso took the luxury of happily snipping away at Taulava’s hair with all his curls at the house of the Seigles’ in Pasig after the game.
Taulava’s wife, the former Ana Marie Corveau, was shocked to see the man with all the curls gone.
“I was sleeping when he came home so I was shocked when I woke up. I knew they had this bet but you know these guys, sometimes you don’t take them seriously. Sometimes they’re just kidding,” she said.
Taulava, who represents a new wave of power players in the pro league today, was so eager to keep his locks intact, shooting 18 points, grabbing 16 rebounds and sneaking in three assists. Indeed, he was a pillar of strength for Selecta and the rock in the center of the Selecta squad all-game long.
During a team’s huddle before the game, he was a picture of intensity knowing by heart what the game, and a Selecta victory, would mean to him, telling his teammates “we gotta get on them early. I say we take them down early in the game.”
He was responsible for tapping the ball that triggered a breakaway dunk by Kenneth Duremdes that made it 64-62 in favor of Selecta with 11 seconds remaining. But as cruel fate would have it, Harp made the biggest shot of his budding career.
At this stage of the selection process, PBA observers predict Taulava is a cinch to make it to the national team that will attempt to regain the country’s lost glory in the Asian Games and end a long 40-year title drought.
Taulava, however, remained humble.
“We have a lot of hard work ahead of us and I don’t think I’m a cinch to make it now. I’ll keep on supporting my team because I have so much respect for these guys,” he said. “We need this kind of competitiveness to be ready for the Asian Games.”
National coach Jong Uichico praised Taulava for his intensity both in games and in practice.
“What impresses me is he’s trying to work within the system. Though he is a go-to guy with Mobiline, he does little things, and is really helping the team,” said Uichico.
He also lauded the two candidates teams for playing to win “but didn’t play rough or dirty.”
The two national training teams are made up of full-blooded Filipino players and taller, quicker and more athletic half-Filipinos, most of them Fil-Ams, and they are going up against imports-backstopped PBA ballclubs in this season-opening tournament.
Selecta has eight talented half-Filipinos with Taulava and 6-6 Erik Menk at the tip of the lance. Backing them up are homegrown talent 6-3 Kenneth Duremdes and 5-9 Olsen Racela.
It also has Ali Peek, Dennis Espino, Rafi Reavis, Dondon Hontiveros, Chris Calaguio and Patrick Fran.
Hapee is led by the Seigle brothers, Andy and Danny, Johnny Abarrientos, Noy Castillo, Davonn Harp, seven-footer Edward Joseph Feihl, 6-9 Marlou Aquino and Jeffrey Cariaso.
Many believe that at least seven to eight PBA players from both teams are shoo-ins for the Asiad-bound selection, leaving Uichico’s coaching staff with only just a few more candidates to choose from to complete his lineup.
Highly favored to make it to the national team are at least seven players from Selecta, among them Taulava, Menk, Duremdes and Racela, and five from Hapee, among them the Seigle brothers, Abarrientos, Castillo and Harp.
Uichico is now readying the final composition of the Asiad Team, although he is still mum on its final roster, much less its starting unit.
“I will be making my decision very soon. It will be a hard decision to make because all of them are worthy of making the team,” he said.
Uichico said the pool will be reduced to 18 candidates after the first conference although the number could go down to the final 15 should the two national candidates teams make an early exit in the Governors Cup.
The 15 remaining aspirants will campaign in the PBA’s Commissioner Cup and none of them would know who among them will wear the national jerseys until they are in Pusan.
“Those 15 candidates will come with me in the Asian Games. I won’t name the 12 players because we still have a lot of time to submit our final lineups. Besides we don’t know who will stay healthy until Asian Games,” Uichico said.
Uichico plans to hold twice-a-day practice: Team A in the morning and Team B in the afternoon. He has tapped the services of Eric Altamirano of Purefoods and Barangay Ginebra’s Caidic as his assistant coaches.
But Uichico said he will no longer call the shots for any of the two national candidates teams in the Governors’ Cup.
His experience during the two teams’ first meeting when he took over the coaching job in the absence of the regular ones had so affected his perspective that he vowed there won’t be a repeat.
“So far I have achieved what I intended to do on the bench. Now, I’m in the process of running a new perspective,” said Uichico, who escaped what would have been an embarrassment of sorts had he lost the game against his assistant, Altamirano, who handled the Selecta team against his Hapee team.
Interestingly, Uichico was not supposed to get involved in that game but his other assistants, Caidic and Favis, were out of the country observing an ongoing tournament in Japan.
Uichico, who took over the head coaching job when Ron Jacobs suffered a stroke last year, called Caidic in Tokyo a day after the Hapee-Selecta game and advised him to return home as soon as possible.
Uichico said his being in the stands, not on the bench, gave him a better appreciation of the remaining 27 candidates seeking a spot in the Philippine team to the Pusan Games slated Sept. 28-Oct. 14. .
“It’s hard to evaluate each player when your on the bench,” said Uichico.
In Pusan, the Chinese would still be the biggest test in the country’s bid to reclaim the basketball gold which the Filipinos last won in 1962 in Jakarta.
The country also won the cage championships in the inaugural Games in 1951 in New Delhi: in 1956 in Manila; and in 1958 in Tokyo.
For the record, the Philippines last beat China in the Asian Basketball Confederation (ABC) Championships in Kuala Lumpur in January 1986 with a team coached by Ron Jacobs which included naturalized players Dennis Still, Chip England and Jeff Moore.
It turned out, it was the last major basketball crown by the country in the international arena.
Since 1986, the Chinese have become almost unbeatable in Asia particularly in the quadrennial games where they held the crown with iron hands for more than two decades now.
So the task of beating China and Korea — the traditional title contenders — and even Lebanon — an emerging power in the region — is formidable.
Since the PBA, Asia’s first play-for-pay league, was tasked by the Basketball Association of the Philippines (BAP) with forming the national team in the last three editions of the Asian Games, it has won one silver and one bronze medal.
A team coached by superstar Robert Jaworski lost to the powerhouse Chinese in the finals of the 1990 Asian Games in Beijing, while the squad handled by Norman Black failed to win a medal after finishing fourth in the 1994 Games in Hiroshima.
The Centennial Team coached by Tim Cone, after months of rigid training at home and abroad, won the bronze medal in Bangkok in 1998.
It will mark the fourth time since the coming of open basketball that a PBA selection will wear the national tri-colors in the Asian Games.
And this year, many see the country to have the best chance of regaining Asian glory with the presence of so many Fil-Am talent that can surely size up against the bigger Chinese and the equally dangerous Koreans.
