CHICKENPIEKuya Ramon has never touched a basketball in his life. Tonight he is standing outside the sari-sari store, arms crossed, explaining the pick-and-roll to three teenagers who did not ask.
This is what winning by 31 does to a country. Gilas Pilipinas beat Kazakhstan 109-78 at the Asian Games and by halftime the entire barangay had a coaching license. Tita Baby, who thought "zone defense" was a subdivision, is now yelling at the TV about rotations. The tricycle driver outside has strong opinions about our three-point shooting selection. Nobody consulted a rulebook. Everybody has a take.
We do this every single time. One good half of basketball and the whole country remembers it invented the sport. Never mind that most of these new analysts couldn't tell you what a shot clock violation looks like two days ago. Confidence arrived faster than the final buzzer.
Here's the part that's actually true, though: we've earned the right to be annoying about this one. Thirty-one points is not a nail-biter you get to humble-brag about — it's a beatdown you get to throw a fiesta over. The team looked like a team. The bench got minutes and made them count. Nobody needed a last-second miracle to feel good about themselves, which, for a fanbase raised on buzzer-beaters and heartbreak, is basically a spiritual experience.
So let the tanod keep coaching. Let Tita Baby keep yelling at Coach about substitution patterns she learned forty minutes ago. This is the tax we pay for getting to feel good about something collectively — everyone becomes an expert, nobody remembers by Thursday, and it doesn't matter, because for one night the group chat wasn't about gas prices or the weather. It was about a fast break.
That's the real skill Gilas has. Not just the win. The 24-hour national delusion that we've always been this good at basketball. We haven't. We are tonight. Let us have it.
Next game, everyone's a coach again. Some things a 31-point win can't fix — like our memory.
