Never Say Die, Big J

The Big J's big day.
(Image via InterAKTV/Paolo Papa)

(Rey Moralde of TheNoLookPass.com will take over for this post as he pays tribute to the PBA's legendary player, "The Big J" Robert Jaworski.)

Hello. My name is Rey Moralde and I am an NBA blogger that lives in Southern California. I founded TheNoLookPass.Com and am a contributor to ForumBlueAndGold.Com, the Laker blog that's part of ESPN's TrueHoop Network.

Roy had asked me to do this piece about someone that was important to my love for the game of basketball. That someone? Robert Jaworski. Jaworski's jersey was retired a couple of days ago and I don't know why it took the Philippine Basketball Association this long to retire his number.

While I talk about the NBA and confess to not keeping up with the PBA, the PBA was actually one of the reasons why I love and write about the game of basketball. Yes, I am a Filipino-American and I spent six years of my childhood in the Philippines. I can't remember how or what exactly gravitated me to the Philippine Basketball Association but it became an instant addiction once I started watching the games on TV (at the old Channel 4). It would be rare for me to miss the Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday doubleheaders. The team I ended up liking? Ginebra San Miguel (which became Anejo at one point and now, I believe, they are Barangay Ginebra).

For the love of Basketball

The Philippines has always been basketball country – it literally has become a part of every Filipino’s lives. You can tell just how popular the game here is just by going around Metro Manila and you’ll see basketball being played on every street corner 24/7. I’m one of those that played ball here almost every day. Friends would drop by my house just to invite me for a game of hoops. Never mind that we didn’t wear the best pair of kicks to ball on – our rubber slippers got us covered.

In 2005, an American from New York came over to the Philippines to do some research about the popularity of the sport. Rafe Bartholomew witnessed first-hand how big it (basketball) was here. He not only learned the history of Philippine hoops but also the Filipino language: Tagalog. Having spent 3 years in the country, he's now just as fluent as the locals with the language (I send him tweets on his Twitter account in Tagalog and he replies to me just the same – how cool is that?). His passion for basketball was no different from us Filipinos. Upon returning to the US, the great memories he brought home from a hoops-loving country was the main inspiration he penned the book now known all over the world as Pacific Rims.