Everywhere we traveled we played basketball. It served several purposes; it kept us in great shape - there was nothing better than stretching my legs and sweating for a few hours on a hoop court if I’d been cramped up on a plane for seven hours, but basketball was also our ambassador, our way of making friends with the locals, experiencing the cultural identity that you definitely won’t find at the Hard Rock Café or on sightseeing tours. Basketball is not the world’s most popular sport, that’s soccer by leaps and bounds, and often times hoop games were hard to find. The search led us to many college campuses, to downtrodden public parks, and into dangerous slums deep in the cities. We were among the real people – the common and the humble, true warriors who would have to struggle their whole lives, and our safety was only assured once we earned our respect on the court. Usually we were the whitest things out there other than the backboards.
Shane was a much better baller than me. His game was incredibly efficient, with nothing flashy but a deadly jump shot and a vertical that allowed him to play above the rim. His motor was always running, and his nonstop hustle in rebounding earned him the nickname “Scrap Dog” back in the states. I was, at best, when I worked hard to get in great shape, an above average athlete with decent hoop skills, but nothing spectacular, though I was a good passer, rebounder, and all around team player. Where Shane had pure love for the game, I was too far in my own head and often got frustrated that I didn’t play better. I wanted to be great, but I was only sort-of-good. Most of the time I fumbled through it and got by on pure heart and hustle, but in one rare moment, in Rio De Janiero on a court next to the beach at night, my potential was revealed: I couldn’t miss. That night I hit jumper after jumper from everywhere on the court, no matter who was in my face - just catch, look, and shoot. I wasn’t even thinking – just acting, and I must have hit ten long jumpers, on an outdoor court at night, within a two game span. It felt effortless, and I glided down the court in a perfect zone that even had the locals cheering as I swished shot after shot. But it quickly faded, and soon I was back to the pedestrian, over-thinking gritty player I had always been. That’s ok; basketball was still a passion for me and a hell of a lot of fun. I’ve met some of the coolest people on earth on basketball courts all over the world: Big Santi in Ecuador, Luis “El Toro” Diego in Costa Rica, and DJ Lapa in Brazil, and these friendships opened the door to experiences that no other tourist could fathom.
Our search for a great hoop game, for sublime athletic bliss, never led us further on a wild goose chase, and was more rewarding in the end, than in the Philippines. Before we flew there I didn’t know much about the country, but thought that it would be pretty well developed because of the US military influence. I assumed it was like Puerto Rico, another US territory, where the roads and the infrastructure were well maintained. That notion was dispelled quickly when I looked out the airplane window as we landed amongst pockets of shantytowns and garbage dumps. Manila looked like a city had once been here but then a nuclear bomb had gone off and now, decades later, the jungle was moving in and threatening to take over. It didn’t seem like people had homes – they were always on the street; working, eating their meals, falling asleep in the back of their cars or on park benches, and probably even making love right there. The traffic made Los Angeles’ highways look like Amish country roads. Several times we hopped in a taxi and ask the driver to take us to some tourist destination, only to get stuck in a maze of gridlocked traffic for hours, the cab driver honking and yelling and nudging and rolling onto the sidewalk, but making no forward progress. Eventually he’d give up, and tell us that tell us that we had to turn back. Turn back. It’s a good thing that the taxi rides were so cheap, because we must have spent four hours a day in the back seat but it never cost us more than a few dollars. We kept the windows were rolled up because the pollution was abhorrent, every day the sky a hazy pea soup color though it was well over ninety five degrees. People on the street wore red bandanas over their faces to try and keep out the belching black smoke. Even the shoeshine boys wore ski masks, their eyes yellow like dogs in the rain.
The tropical sun burned through the haze and made everything and everyone wilt. Women carried umbrellas on the street to try and block it’s rays. To take refuge from the heat we visited the local shopping mall to let the AC wash over us. The place was gigantic, and every day we strolled around, never buying anything, but spending a few blissful hours in the perfect cool temperatures. I guess that white guys were a rarity around there, because often times families or girls would stop us and want to take pictures with us. Little kids ran up and touch my arm hair, amazed that it was blonde like my head. Everyone was so warm and friendly it was touching. I seriously think Philippinos – called Pinoy and Pinay – are the sweetest people on earth – much more agreeable than my stern and cranky German stock. That’s the experience I’ve had even in the United States (shout-out to my peeps Gale and Joyce!), where to be friends with someone is to be treated instantly like family, and it was the same even in big, crowded Manila. Of course at the mall they didn’t suspect that really I couldn’t even afford to buy anything, and was just exploiting their free AC, but it was an ego boost just the same. In fact in my six weeks in the Philippines I didn’t buy anything other than a notebook to write in, no souvenirs, no knock off sunglasses or watches like Thailand, nothing. It was a shit hole but I was never happier on my trip around the world because I was completely devoid of material desires – there was nothing to do but enjoy the people around me and feel blessed for what I had.
It was only early November but the whole city was already decorated in Christmas lights. The PI is a very Roman Catholic country with deeply religious people, and they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, so they Christmas celebration started months in advance. Everywhere I looked was glowing with strands of blinking red and green lights, which looked surreal when it was one hundred degrees and there wasn’t snow within five thousand miles. But no matter where we looked we couldn’t find a basketball court. We asked around – porters in the hotel, waiters at the bar, and even at the sporting goods store in the mall, but no one could give us a definite answer on where there was a place to play hoops in Manila. They were nice enough to sell us the only basketball they had in the store – a red, white and blue rubber ball that looked like a holdover from the ABA. And then one day we stopped by some random bar way in the heart of Manila. We were trying to go to the movies, but our cab driver got us locked in such a horrible traffic jam that we missed the movie and just told him to take us to the closet bar. The place was packed with patrons jamming out to a great band on stage, who performed perfect renditions of famous Western songs, going seamlessly from the Rolling Stones to the Black Eyed Peas to the Beatles and back to Brittney Spears. In fact some of their songs sounded better than the originals! We got a table and order a few beers and put our backpacks and basketball on a chair. The table next to us was filled with some college kids with Pinoy Pride jackets on, getting soused off of pitchers of beer. When they saw the basketball they said what’s up and invited us over to the their table to slam beers with them. They spoke broken English with heavy accents, so it was hard to understand if they were asking us about New York City or inquiring about Madonna’s titty, but I did my best to answer, just shaking my head yes and holding up my beer to cheers them and drink more. We asked them if basketball was very popular in the Philippines, to which they said yes vigorously and yelled “Michael Jordan.” Ok, at least they knew what sport we were talking. Before they got so drunk that they fell out of their chairs we tried to extract the approximate whereabouts of a hoop court in Manila. They slapped me on the back, refilling my beer until it overflowed onto the table and into my lap, leaving my shorts wet like I had peed myself, and told me enthusiastically about a place we could play. Really? Shane and I perked up. We tried to piece together what came out of their inebriated pie holes in between them swearing allegiance to the Philippines and singing along to a Ricky Martin song. I understood the name “Angeles City,” and something else about “Rodman.” Rodman? Was that the name of a neighborhood or a park or something? Or was he still reciting his favorite players off the Bulls? They assured us that Angeles City is where we wanted to go, and that it was close. No worries, we had enough information to part company before they started making us do Jagermeister shots.
The next morning we headed to the bus station, which looked more like a metallic refugee camp. We walked around aimlessly looking for the correct bus, repeating the name ‘Angeles’ to anyone who would listen. I might as well have pinned a note to my red sweater. They gave a sly smile and laughed at me when I told them I was trying to get to Angeles, but eventually they took pity and placed us on the right bus. It wasn’t the nicest thing I’d ever seen – we had to squeeze in three to a seat on a sweltering converted school bus with sparkly diamond plating, Philippino flags, and colorful stickers plastered on every inch of the outside. I was jammed in between a mother breast-feeding her baby and a farmer holding a cage with a live chicken in it. At least it was going to be a short ride, like our friends in the bar promised.
Seven hours later I arrived in Angeles City, soaked in sweat and a little bit of baby puke, my face blackened with diesel fumes. That bus ride took years off of my life, and at one point I swear we were driving around in circles, picking up and dropping off the exact same family of short, black haired, smiling Philippinos for two hours. We collected our backpacks and found a cheap hotel with white tile on the floor and walls like a sanitarium with a wobbly ceiling fan. I changed my shirt and we hit the streets to look for the basketball court. Shane held the basketball, and when we asked the first person we ran into where the court was, they pointed to the ball and said “Rodman!” and motioned for us to head up the street. There it was again – this “Rodman” talk. Was it a Tagalog word or something? Maybe it meant “peace and blessings to all gringos over 5’7” tall?” We walked up the road into the heart of Angeles.
It was only dusk but the streets were already packed with paunchy middle aged white guys in socks and sandals, accompanied by attractive Philipina ladies walking in and out of bars with chromatic neon lights. There must have been hundreds of bars in rows, all blasting dance music and advertising the coldest beer. What was this place all about? We went into the first watering hole and bellied up to the bar and ordered San Miguel beers. It looked like a strip club, the whole back side of the room taken up by a stage with two brass poles and mirrored walls. The bartender was a burly gringo with a Hell’s Angels leather vest. We got to chatting and he told us that we were now in Balibago, the seediest nightlife district of Angeles City. Years ago this town catered to all of the American GI’s at nearby Clark Air Force Base, who \ wanted to do nothing but drink, fight, and fuck when they got 48 hours leave. Angeles had all of that, and the hundreds of Go-Go bars were filled with party girls, prostitutes, and dealers with hash and heroin smuggled in from Thailand. You could find anything you wanted and the law was nonexistent. Clark Air Force Base was a stronghold in WWII for US planes to launch campaigns against the Japanese, but in 1991 nearby Mount Pinatubo erupted in a volcanic blast that did serious damage to the Air Force base. Soon after the US lowered their flag and vacated the base, and the grounds laid abandoned for years, open to looters and any drug traffickers who wanted to set up shop. With the GI’s and their dollars gone virtually overnight, the town went from a bustling bizarre of sin to a sad shell of its one time infamy. There were the same amount of bars and the same amount of hustlers and girls trying to make money, but only a few hundred, instead of thousands, of drunk patrons every weekend. Years later it did start to fill up again, this time with American ex-pats and perverts, those too socially unacceptable – or broke – to ever pull a date in the US, yet alone pay their rent.
Our biker bartender excused himself and walked to the end of the bar to ring a cowbell at full blast about five feet from my head. I almost fell off the stool as the ringing echoed around my empty brain. On cue a dozen attractive girls in their late teens or early twenties walked out onto the stage. They all wore red or white bikinis with a numbered card hanging off of their G-strings, making it look like a busload of swimsuit models were lining up to buy ham at the deli counter. The bad disco music went up three notches and the girls started to writhe and gyrated on stage, laughing and teasing each by trying to pull off each other’s tops. A withered white guy in an army jacket smoking a cigar in the corner signaled to the bartender which number he wanted, and the girl came down off the stage, took him by the hand, and led him out of sight through a bamboo beaded curtain.
That was Angeles. There really was nothing else to it – just party after party, day after day, hundreds of bars filled with thousands of girls and nasty American dudes with a couple dollars to throw around, because they definitely weren’t spending them on gym memberships or dental care. You could find a donkey show easier than a church service, and the girls did things with ping pong balls and balloons that would make Ron Jeremy blush. But they were just doing what they had to survive and probably sending most of the money back to their poor families in the country. They were still filled with laughter and had joy in their eyes, but the gringos just looked damn pathetic, stumbling around half drunk with pickled yellow skin, chain smoking over warm beers in the noon heat. Even the streets all looked the same and the sun never seemed to shine. To this day if I see a gal in her thirties or early forties in the states who is half Filipina and half white or black I can ask them if their mom is from Angeles, and about 90% of the time I’m correct, leaving them amazed like I’m the best psychic since Aunt Cleo. Usually they don’t even have a clue what Angeles is all about, or that their mom was a bar girl who got knocked up by a GI with a few bucks by accident.
Over the next few days we drank a lot, hanging out at bars with tattoo chairs on the dance floor, just in case the patrons wanted a quick drunken tattoo, nonstop thumping music and neon lights casting shadows on so many hot young Filipina chicks that it all became a blur. We drank with muscled-up Special Forces guys on weekend leave from all sorts of dangerous hot spots in the Pacific Theater. Shane and I looked younger than we actually were, athletically built with short haircut, so the soldiers would inevitably ask us where we were stationed. When we denied being in any military service, they sized us up with newfound curiosity, and fell silent for a few sips of their whiskey before asking again, this time in hushed tones. No seriously, we aren’t in the service – we were just travellers backpacking around the world. Yeah right – in Angeles? They weren’t buying it, and every time we denied the obvious they mentally promoted us to a higher rank in a more secretive unit of the military. Eventually they came to the conclusion that we were CIA agents, and bought us Tequila shots and treated us with reverence. CIA? Come on now - I don’t even pay my taxes, but I took the free shot and declined lime and salt; Special Ops soldiers like myself don’t need training wheels.
We kept asking around for a basketball court with no luck. It was apparent that even though there was plenty of ball handling going on in Angeles, it wasn’t on the hoop court. I wore a New York Knicks jersey around town and everywhere I went the girls giggled and pointed and said “Rodman” to me. What the hell was it with this Rodman thing? This was a Knicks jersey, and I know Dennis Rodman never played for the Knicks. We’d had about enough of this little brown sin city, so we planned to take a bus out of there the next day. Our last night we were chilling on the street, eating roasted chicken and rice we bought from a vendor for $2, when I looked up and saw someone interesting. A very tall black gentleman was sauntering down the street with a woman on each arm, wearing a Chicago Bull’s jersey with number 91 – Dennis Rodman. He had to be about 6’8” tall and was a spitting image of Dennis himself. I hollered over good-naturedly that the Knicks were gonna win it all that year, and he looked back and smiled. That’s how we got to meet Philander Rodman, Dennis Rodman’s biological dad. He was a super nice guy and we bullshitted on the street a little but before he invited us back to his bar.
Philander was an interesting cat. He had twenty-seven children – count ‘em, twenty-seven, though he’d had fallen out of touch or didn’t support a number of them. Shane and I drank hung out with him in his bar all that night and the next afternoon, even though we were the only patrons there. It turns out he is a local legend in the Philippines, blatantly living off his son’s fame, even though he was publicly estranged from Dennis. He told us about his plans to write a book about their (lack of a) relationship and showed us a calendar that he put together for the local businesses that was supposed to make him some money. Philander was perpetually accompanied by two middle-aged Filipina ladies who catered to us and pandered to his every need, and as far as I could ascertain he was in a romantic relationship with both of them. Just when I was pegging him as a stereotypical scumbag he told us how some of his twenty-seven children were adopted, and he ran several charities that bought wheelchairs and medical care for Filipino orphans who otherwise couldn’t afford it.
We asked Philander where we could play hoops – who would know better? He thought for a while and told us that there wasn’t much basketball in Angeles, but further South in the country, like in Davao or Cebu City on the Visayas Islands we might find some basketball tournaments. Cool – finally we were making progress. Philander offered to drive us to the airport, and was so hospitable that he wouldn’t even let us carry our own backpacks, instead piling our seventy five pound packs onto one of his 4’10” Filipina wives to carry to his van. We jumped an island-hopper flight down to Cebu City, watching hundreds of small tropical islands sprawled out in the ocean below us.
Cebu was a mellow, sunny colonial city with four hundred year old Spanish ruins on its turquoise waterline. Even though it was the second-largest city in the Philippines it was much more mellow than Manila. The nightlife was almost nonexistent, which was a good change from Angeles, and we managed to find a local sports store. We asked the manager where we could play basketball, but he just pointed to a banner hanging on the wall and shoved a sign-up-sheet on a clipboard in my face. What was this? He wanted to enlist us to run the upcoming Cebu marathon. Shane and I looked at each other in disappointment – still no hoops, but the entry fee was only ten dollars and we didn’t want to be rude, so we signed up. I’d never run a marathon in my life. In fact, the furthest I’d ever run was a few 10k races, but those days I was more about pushups, half-court hoops, and a steady hydration diet of beer. But why the hell not – it was only 26.2 miles, right? The store workers applauded when we handed the signed forms back to them, like they had just discovered some Kenyan super-runners. How long did we have to train? I inquired, hoping we had at least a couple weeks away. It was the next morning they told us. Oh shit. They told us we had to be at the local Italian restaurant at six o’clock that evening along with all of the other racers.
Back at the hotel I began carefully planned my race attire. I took off the long basketball shorts, Knicks jersey, and cheap Reebok sneakers I was wearing and threw them on the bed. From what I’d seen on TV whenever people ran marathons they wore impossibly skimpy nylon outfits. I didn’t have anything skimpy, but I could easily cut off my one pair of jeans and make some nut-hugger jean shorts? Also weren’t I supposed to put Vaseline and band aids on my nipples or something? Or was that for Ravers on ecstasy who danced all night long? I was getting confused, but thought it would be best to keep my jeans and not show up at the start line looking like I was going to a gay rave. I rifled through my luggage to find an outfit that would be more appropriate for running a marathon. I pulled out all of my clothing options and laid them on the bed. What I decided on was a pair of long basketball shorts, a Knicks jersey, and a cheap pair of Reeboks. Ok, problem solved. Those low top sneakers also served as my basketball shoes, my every day walking around shoes, my hiking boots, my snow shoes, and my fancy dress shoes on the trip, because they were black.
We found the restaurant and walked into the midst of five hundred little Filipino guys, each one shorter and in better shape than the next, all ready to run the race the next day. The room fell into silence when we entered as they sized up their new competition, until they started whispering amongst themselves and pointing at our legs. We were the only white guys in the room, and they thought for sure that because of our long legs we had a decided advantage to win the marathon. I’m not that tall by US standards - about 5’11”(6’3” with the afro) and Shane was a leggy 6’2”, but compared to 5’4” dudes we must have looked like Carl Lewis. The activity in the room throttled back up again as they huddled together and readjusted the odds, hashed out new strategy, and cursed the gringo ringers who surely must be professional distance runners who flew in just for the race.
I can confidently say that my favorite part about a Marathon is carbo-loading the night before. We were seated at long tables, and of course they gave us white-skinned distance running superstars the head of the tables. The waiters brought out huge bowls of spaghetti and sauce and everyone dug in. I was loving it – an all-you-can-eat that rivaled Tuesday nights at the Olive Garden. I ordered baskets of garlic bread, meatballs, and sprinkled Parmesan cheese on everything. The other runners stuck to spaghetti with little sauce and water, and looked on in amazement at my eating display. Surely I must be an Olympic-caliber athlete the way I was carelessly ingesting calories, because no amateur in his right mind would eat all of that bad stuff the night before a marathon. Half of them probably considered dropping out when I had the waiter bring me a bottle of Cabernet and toasted to their health. By midnight I was stuffed and quite drunk with red teeth. The other runners retired to their hotel rooms one by one, until just a few of us were left. It occurred to me that we didn’t have many details on the race, so I asked the guy next to me what time it was starting the next day; maybe I could sleep late and get in a nice breakfast before the race. He pointed to his watch and told me that the race started at 4 o’clock. Four o’clock, huh, that’s pretty late in the day to be starting a race that could last 5 hours. No no, he told me, 4 o’clock AM. Oh shit. The race was starting in four hours.
Shane and I got a few hours of sleep but I was still tipsy with stained red teeth when we arrived at the starting line in the pitch-black morning. They started the race so early so that most of the runners could be finish up by the time the late morning sun really started blasting the pavement. They took signed us in at a registration table and helped us safety pin our race number to our shirts, which made me sort of feel like a bar girl in Angeles. Maybe a nice gringo would come take me away from all this so I wouldn’t have to run? We tried to hide way in the back of the pack but our fleet-feeted compadres wouldn’t have it and ushered us to the very front, right under the starting line banner. Bang! The starting gun went off, and five hundred Filipinos bolted into action. I started off number 1, but within ten seconds I was number 124. A wave of humanity pressed against my back, everyone charged with adrenaline to launch into the 26-mile endeavor. The street took a turn and widened and the runners spread out and fell into loose groups, each at their own pace. This was way different than running a few miles for exercise or sprinting up and down the hoop court. I tried to keep up with Shane but after about three miles I couldn’t keep kicking with his long stride and he left me in the dust. We were leaving the city and heading out of town, into smaller towns and then into the countryside lined with sugar cane fields and chicken farms. Runners passed me left and right. I thought I was doing pretty well, especially considering that I was still slightly drunk and filled with enough pasta to make Tony Soprano push back from the table, but these little Flip runners kept blowing right past me. Around mile seven my face was a lovely purple color and I was breathing like a water buffalo giving birth. The real marathoners were just warming up, and left me in the rear view mirror with scornful looks, not because they condemned me for being an inferior athlete, but because they had so grossly misjudged me as the great White Hope Olympian. All of the men under 30 years old had long past me, but over the next few miles phalanxes of older men with graying hair, portly women, and then a few wheelchair athletes passed me. I swear I saw a pregnant woman smoking a cigarette and pulling a rickshaw lap me through one remote village. I kept laying one foot in front of another, but my legs were like rubber so it was all a struggle now. My back was tightening up and my feet were killing me, not just from the pounding on the pavement, but because my skin was rubbing inside my shoe the wrong way and causing agonizing pain. It’s at that point that I realized that if I was going to finish this race my mind had to take over. I would do this, I told myself, I would run this marathon. No matter what I wouldn’t stop. This was a seminal event in my life, a defining moment where I would transcend the limits of my physical body and set my soul free.
Have you ever heard of “Runner’s High,” where you get in such a groove that your breathing becomes meditative and you actually feel like you’re floating outside of your body, the miles melting away effortlessly? Yeah well I never got that. Maybe those cheesy breadsticks were weighing my soul down from floating, but all of a sudden it sounded a lot better to be kick back on my fluffy bed in the hotel and watch Sportscenter while ordering coconut pancakes than running around out in the jungle. I flagged down a passing taxi and collapsed into the back seat, sweating and panting, and told the driver to high-tail it to the hotel. I ducked down when we passed the streets near the marathon’s course so they wouldn’t see me trying not to puke. Back at the hotel I had to limp into the lobby like I was wearing a full body cast because my whole body had frozen up. I got up to the room, ordered pancakes and a pitcher of pineapple juice from room service, and carefully undid my sneakers. I had doubled up my socks but they were both still completely soaked with blood. Ouch. Shane limped in an hour later, looking a lot better off than me. We checked the course map and figured out that he had run an amazing 19 miles before stopping, and I had made it 11 miles. Not bad for a couple of gringos who hadn’t trained at all, but we still hadn’t found a basketball game in the Philippines.
We spent a few more days in Cebu, recuperating from our impromptu marathon attempt, and then went down to the beautiful island of Boracay, where I lounged on the beach. Our five weeks in the Philippines was drawing to a close and we had a flight scheduled to take us to Thailand for Christmas and New Years within the week. We got a ride on an island hopper flight back up to Manila and put down our Lonely Planet Philippines guide in favor of an unopened Thailand copy. I had pretty much given up on our hoop dreams, but we still carried the red-white-and-blue basketball around Manila with us, either out of habit or hope.
Back in Manila we made one more visit to our favorite mall, where we sat down to eat at Goldilocks. Our table was filled with steaming dishes of lumpia, pancet, and chicken adobo as Shane and I discussed our plans for Thailand. The basketball rolled off the chair next to us and across the floor, with me giving chase so we didn’t lose it. I followed it to a table in the corner of the restaurant, where an old bearded man had picked it up and started playing with it and laughing. He only spoke Tagalog, but his teenage daughter translated for him as he asked us if we were basketball players. Why, do you know a place we can play? I asked, just kidding around. Sure, she responded, he knew a nice court where they played basketball. We were stunned, and questioned him optimistically, but after being burned so many times before we were a little hesitant. The old man gave us a good lead on a guy he knew who was in a league, and from there we followed the trail to his home, over to his neighbor when he wasn’t there, and eventually to a garage mechanic’s shop, littered with abandoned car parts and stray cats. Was there a court here, we asked? No – this was where the guy’s cousin worked. He came out and talked to us for a while in Tagalog and pointed in the other direction. Our new friend translated that we were supposed to head deeper into Manila and look for a certain market. What the hell did a market have to do with a basketball court? Was there someone else to ask there? Were we going to run into Larry Bird’s dad, or have to join a Triathlon? Who the hell knew, but we set off alone that way, too lost to go back, with nothing but faith and some bad directions.
We found the market after hoofing it about five miles, seemingly backtracking and crossing in and out of increasingly worse neighborhoods. It was deep inside the city, an open-air bizarre at the intersection of four roads and a nearby bus stop. People were unloading their motorcycles, bicycles, and pickup trucks with fruits, vegetables, cigarettes, and clothing to sell from rickety wooden stands or right on cardboard on the street. The sidewalk was so packed that you couldn’t even turn around and had to move at the speed of the crowd. As far as I could tell there were no other Americans within miles, nor any familiar faces or police we could see. All of a sudden I felt pretty conspicuous in this dangerous Third World city, with my wallet, passport, and my camera in the backpack. The locals looked us up and down like an oddity and then went back to their business of buying and selling things to make a living. We asked a bus driver where this basketball court was and he pointed across the street. I was excited – we had finally found it! We’d have a proper basketball court to run up and down and play full court games all afternoon. Then I saw what he was pointing at. The “court” was just a rusted iron rim, with no net, and a wooden backboard slapped together with tops of packing crates. It hung at a slight angle around nine and a half feet off the ground, nailed to a wooden electric pole, right on the side of the busy street. That was it? That was the best basketball court we could find in all of Manila? Even if we could find people to play on this beat-up homemade rim, our “court” would be right in the middle of the street where the traffic zipped by. We looked at each other, stunned, and burst out in laughter. How could we not? I grabbed the ball and put it back in the backpack, ready to start walking to find a taxicab and the long journey back to our hotel. But Shane grabbed the ball and had another idea. We dodged our way across the street and stood almost directly under the hoop, the only place we wouldn’t get run over. Even though it wasn’t regulation height, when we stepped down from the sidewalk it was close enough. Shane threw up the first layup and it rattled in. I collected the ball and did the same on the other side. A few people looked over, thinking that either we were touched in the head or were attempting suicide-by-bus. Shane and I kept taking a few dribbles and putting up layups and baby hooks right under the basket. I strapped my backpack around the electric pole so it would always be in sight while we were playing. A vendor next to us, who was selling fruit and magazines at his stand, laughed good-naturedly at me when I missed a layup. I handed him the ball and waved him onto the street to try a shot himself. He was hesitant to come out there, but Shane and I dragged him out after he had been laughing at us. He took a shot and it flew over the whole backboard and bounced into the market. Some of his friends around his stand laughed at him, and he smiled and wanted the ball back to shoot again.
Now we had three people shooting hoops and a handful of bystanders. Our new Filipino friend got a little braver and stepped out into the street to shoot a jump shot. The cars honked at him, but slowed and swerved around. At least he had carved out some space to dribble and take ten-foot jumpers. More heads turned. I made a jump shot and heard some gleeful applause behind me. Four dirty street kids were sitting on the curb, cheering on our game with big smiles on their faces. We pulled them into our circle and showed them how to shoot the ball, and as they missed we’d just lift them up so they can put the ball in the rim point blank. A few older ladies loved that we were including the kids in the game, and more people gathered to watch.
Out of nowhere three older teenagers appeared, wearing ratty hoop shorts and flip flops. They looked a little rough, with knife scars on their arms and broken noses, and for a moment we didn’t know if they were there to rob us or to kick us off their turf or what. I passed the basketball to the biggest one and motioned for him to shoot. A smile came on his face as he took a couple dribbles and nailed a fifteen-foot jumper. We had some competition.
The guys turned out to be friendly, and they pushed the gathering crowd back so we had some more room to play. We split up our six players into teams, four out of the six around 5’5” tall and wearing flip flops, and set the lip of the sidewalk as the out of bounds. We were going to play to 21 by ones, but if you hit a shot past the manhole cover it was a two pointer. By now most of the vendors had left their stands and wandered over to see what the commotion was. I checked the ball to my opponent at the top of the key (the middle of the street) and the game started. My man immediately blew by me and got a pass full speed to lay it up. Wow this guy was good! I had assumed that it would be a crappy game because they would be falling all over in flip flops and they were all short, but actually these guys were great athletes. They cut, ran, jumped, and D’d up just like they were wearing the newest pair of Jordans. Believe me it’s a little embarrassing to be outrebounded by a guy half a foot shorter than me wearing in flip flops, so I stepped up my intensity, and soon we were hustling, scrapping, and sweating at full speed. A kid whistled every time a car came through that didn’t want to swerve out of our way or a bus that would surely squash us all, and we would scramble to the safety of the sidewalk. It was a great game, and we only won by a few points. I paused to catch my breath, but three new muscular Filipino guys in flip flops stepped on the court, ready to play next. I looked up in between panting for oxygen and was amazed: a crowd had gathered, and it seemed that every man, women, and child within a block of the market was standing in a big semi-circle around our game, cheering on the local players and celebrating every good move or made shot. Someone had even moved their pickup truck to block oncoming traffic on one side of the street so our game wouldn’t be interrupted.
We played four more games against these Filipino guys, exhausting, sweaty, hotly competitive matches at full throttle. They weren’t the most skilled players but hustled like crazy because they were playing for pride - to represent the heart of their people. I won some and lost some, and didn’t play particularly great, but it was a victorious moment none-the-less. I could feel the love and the joy emanating from the rowdy crowd, who were pleased with being thoroughly entertained by their flip flop heroes. Soon all of us were spent and thirsty, and the bystanders one by one wandered back to jobs in the market or getting on with their day. It was approaching five o’clock and the rush-hour cars had to get through so the court disappeared and the street became a traffic thoroughfare once again. We congratulated our newfound friends and gave them homie hugs as they said goodbye. The street kids were still around, so we grabbed them and put them on our shoulders and had a lady snap a couple of photos with my camera. I gave one of them the ball and we walked on out of the market with the locals yelling goodbye and slapping us on the backs. We were still hopelessly lost on the way out of the barrios of Manila, and the sun was going down quickly, but this time it didn’t matter.
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