If you're a diehard basketball fan, and a national team fan at that, it would be a good time to be in the Philippines in the first week of July to see top-notch, world-class cage action.

The Philippines won the rights to host one of three wildcard events for berths to the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in August, giving Gilas Pilipinas the hometown boost that it needs to defy the odds against some of the best teams in the world.

The event will happen on July 4-10 at the Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay with the Filipinos to exhaust their final chance at booking a slot to the main draw of the Games and return to the Olympics for the first time since 1972.

It will be quite a task, like trying to scale Mt. Everest and looking for a smooth road to reach the summit.

And there’s no such thing, as we all know.

But being a Filipino, and being such a lover of the sport, I will start praying for the success of Gilas Pilipinas in that tournament.

We all know that our national team will play with all its heart in the wildcard tournament, and will work hardest to achieve their goal of playing against the best in the Olympics.

We know that our Nationals will come up with the blood, sweat and tears kind of work that is needed. It is now up to us to help them with our prayers. It’s the most powerful tool we know.

And it works.

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Basketball godfather Manny V. Pangilinan deserves kudos for extending all efforts to bring a wildcard leg here, including forking out a reported P93 million as fee that the Fiba charges to the successful bidders.

That sum is by no means mincemeat, even for a multi-billionaire like Pangilinan.

The man has been so engrossed with basketball that he has gone great lengths to give this country what it wants. That stint in the World Cup in Seville, Spain in 2014 wouldn’t have been possible without his help.

Our country has a formidable Asian force in the Gilas squad because Pangilinan is going out of his way to make sure that we Filipinos are represented well in the international scene.

Andray Blatche, and Marcus Douthit before him, embraced Filipino citizenship on the prodding of Pangilinan and his vast business empire.

Sure, Blatche and Douthit were paid hefty sums — in American dollars — for signing on the dotted line and turning their backs on their country of birth, the United States.

For sure, it took a lot of convincing for Blatche and Douthit to do so, and with certainty, those legitimate NBA veterans only got convinced after seeing what a handsome payday it would be for both of them playing as Filipinos.

Some of us might say that Pangilinan is using the money to advertise his various businesses, and that what he shells out returns in the form of sales for his business empire.

This corner doesn’t dispute that. For sure, being the businessman that he is, MVP knows how to circumvent his companies’ policies just to be able to advertise them.

But the question: does he get it all back?

Surely, the man’s pocket will take a hit with what he is doing.

And we don’t hear him whining about his losses. He still moves his best foot forward each time. And that, to me, is more than commendable.

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This corner is not an MVP glorifier and it will never be for anyone.

We say that someone is doing a good job when that someone is, in fact, doing a good job. We bash those who are making a mess at what they are supposed to do, and we will never spare a league, a player, a team manager, or any athlete for that matter whom we feel deserves our attention.

Pangilinan and his group have been running the national team program — the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas — since the country was readmitted back to the Fiba late in the last decade.

Remember the squabble basketball stakeholders had with the defunct Basketball Association in the Philippines that caused the country’s suspension from all Fiba-sanctioned events?

Those were dark days for the Philippines, a country which takes basketball almost as a religion, and to its people who breathe and eat the sport each day.

This corner definitely feels that Pangilinan and his group are doing a marvelous job, but even they cannot please everyone.

Talk is loud that there is a group of people which is trying to unseat Pangilinan as chairman of the SBP, and that this group is doing so because it feels that the current leadership is not doing its job well.

After taking the Philippines back to the World Cup, missing slightly on earning an outright berth to the Olympics and giving the world a Gilas Pilipinas team that it admires, these people still have the gall to say that Pangilinan is not serving the association well.

From what Arab News has gathered from sources recently, this group is planning a takeover in the next SBP elections slated to be held in a couple of months.

Heading this group is a disgraced cage official who reportedly has the backing of another multi-billionaire, whom he will call upon to bankroll the next projects of the SBP.

We are glad to hear than Pangilinan is not about to take this sitting down, though he had said recently that he is stepping down as chairman.

It is also no secret that Pangilinan will ask some of his officials to run for another term and continue the Gilas Pilipinas program, obviously, with his conglomerate remaining as backer.

It is just a painful thing to hear of such a development. Some people are really just too hard to please.