The Toyota Comeback - After Near Heartbreak, A Magnificent Wind-Up (Sports Weekly, 1979)

Sports Weekly Magazine

December 28, 1979 -January 4, 1980

 

 

            They sallied out in the 1979 PBA campaign with a pair of championships under their belt and, as things were the previous season, apparently programmed to become the second ballclub in the league’s history to pull off an epic grand slam of the PBA’s three conference titles.

 

            Having won in ’78 the All-Filipino and third conference titles, the Toyota Tamaraws took the hardcourt at the start of a PBA that just ended with two championships to defend.

 

            But three months after the season opened, they were out of one title as they lost the All-Filipino championship to their arch rivals, the Crispa Redmanizers, 3-2, in a best of five playoffs that went the whole high-pressure route.

 

            But more than losing a title, the Tamaraws found their hopes for a grand slam go pfft with their failure to hang on to the All-Filipino championship they had won the year before.

 

            Another setback in another finale, this one their best of five showdown with Royal Tru Orange which they lost to the Orangemen, three games to one, and the twin-titled Toyota team was like a casino habitue down to his last blue chip.

 

            And as if things were not grim enough for the Tamaraws, their third conference outlook became even dimmer when the opening of the league saw three of their players – Mon Fernandez, Abe King and Estoy Estrada – out of the lineup following disciplinary measures instituted against them, by Coach Dante Silverio who believed they didn’t play hard enough in the last conference.

 

            The three were first declared “absent” by Coach Silverio but eventually he let everybody in n why he had decided to can them: the performances of the three in the second conference left a lot to be desired in so far as consistency and desire to win were concerned.

 

            With Fernandez, Abe King and Estrada out, the Tamaraws suffered a scale-down in their rebounding potential. Still and all, despite this, the Tamaraws were able to come through with a true grit game that enabled them to wrap up a finals berth on the strength of a 4-1 won-lost record, their only loss coming at the hands of the Crispa-Walk Tall Jeansmakers.

 

            Up against what probably was the toughest field of contenders in the third conference, champion Royal Tru Orange, U/Tex, Gilbey’s Gins and the Great Taste Discoverers, it amazed a lot of PBA observers that the Tams were able to chart a straight and true course to the finals.

 

            Pitted for the second time in the season against Crispa in the third conference finals, Toyota’s depleted lineup finally told on the Tams when they got clobbered bad by the Jeansmakers who won by a whopping 28 points in the first game of the playoffs.

 

            That was an awful blow for the Tams, but three days later, they were jolted by a bigger one when Coach Silverio announced during a breakfast press conference at the Intercontinental hotel his decision to quit as coach and manager.

 

            The 40-year old coach, who had piloted Toyota to five league titles, cited as his reason for quitting a management decision to reinstate the three players he had earlier suspended.

 

            The Toyota management, through Delta President Ricardo Silverio, defended its move by stating that it had to be done in the interest of the fans who wanted to see a good title series.

 

 

 

            With Dante out and Fernandez, Abe King and Estrada back in, began their climb back into contention, and as luck would have it, they were able to get back at Crispa-Walk Tall at a time when Crispa had one of its imports, Irv Chatman, in sick bay.

 

            With Crispa springing a leak in the slot, the Tamaraws were quick to cash in and led by as much as 37 points before settling to a 28-point winning margin that levelled the series at 1-1.

 

            Chatman returned to the Crispa lineup in Game 3 of the title playoffs, but with the momentum now on the side of Toyota, the Tams made it 2-1 by spending the Jeansmakers, 107-102.

 

            Two nights later, they applied the title clincher, a tough 98-87, over the Jeansmakers.

 

            It was an epic comeback by the trials struck Tamaraws and what made the feat all the more memorable was that with the win, Toyota became the first PBA ballclub to win the third conference championship for three consecutive years. The first time the Tams made it was against the Emtex Sacronels in 1977. Last year they whipped Tanduay for the title.

 

            “It was a team effort. Everybody played inspired ball,” said acting Toyota coach Fort Acuña in a statement that summed up Toyota’s near plunge as the heartbreak team of the 1979 PBA season and the manner the Tamaraws transformed their brush with a crisis into a victory of storybook proportions.

Why Dante Quit - "To Preserve Honor, Purity of Basketball" (Sports Weekly, 1979)

Sports Weekly Magazine

December 14-21, 1979

Dante Silverio

 

 

            For years, doubts had been cast on the integrity of our basketball games, particularly in the major leagues. My involvement in the sport over the last few seasons provided me with an intimate opportunity to confirm these doubts, which, in some ways, had led me to take certain actions against some of my players.

 

            For one, I did not renew the contract of Danilo Florencio because of suspicions that he purposely did not give his best in some games. Rather than entertain these doubts, I decided to cut off my ties with him.

 

            Now comes an identical situation. Only this time, not just one, but at least three players, are the ones at the other end.

 

            Ever since I refused to use Ramon Fernandez, Abe King and Ernesto Estrada at the start of the Third Conference, I had been constantly under pressure from all quarters. Everybody interested in basketball – the fans, my co-coaches, officials, the broadcast and print media, and even some of our management people – had wanted to know the reasons behind my move.

 

            I must say once again that my action against the three was based on my belief that they did not play their best on several occasions. So rather than worry about their possible action on the court, I deemed it better to keep them out of the team.

 

 

 

            I felt that by so doing, I helped preserve the purity and honor of the sport, which, I think, are more important than just winning.

 

            Without the three players, our team has reached the final, and in the process, has come close to proving my point. However, circumstances beyond my control have denied me the opportunity to continue my personal crusade. Our management has decided to give Fernandez, King and Estrada the chance to play again because it believes our club should not be left alone to carry the fight which other teams in the PBA should be waging collectively.

 

            Management may have other reasons for taking this action.

 

            I felt, however, that involvement in sport carries a duty to the public such as keeping it above reproach. Because of the difference in my belief and that of management, I feel it would be to the best interests of all parties concerned for me to relinquish the position of coach and manager of the Toyota basketball team effective immediately.

The 'New" Bernard Harris: Walking Tall with Crispa (Sports Weekly, 1979)

Sports Weekly Magazine

November 30-December 7, 1979

Peter N. Acosta

 

 

            He got in the Crispa lineup via a majority vote of all the players of the Pasig ballclub, winning handily over Norm Kelly of the Honda Wildcats, and in his first game with his new team, Bernard Harris, formerly of Tanduay, repaid his new teammates’ vote of confidence with a performance that showed he just might be what the doctor ordered as the replacement for the discredited Cyrus Mann.

 

            “I’m happy tonight,” said the Crispa Walk Tall Jeansmakers’ end-of-the-season acquisition whose first stint in the PBA was with the defunct Seven-Up ballclub in 1976 before he made the switch the following year to the Esquires.

 

            If Harris was happy, there was no doubt that the Crispa front office men – owner Danny Floro and Coach Baby Dalupan – were doubly more so.

 

 

 

            For in his first time with the Walk Tall team, Harris proved his awesome potential as Irv Chatman’s partner when he anchored Crispa to a 116-88 romp over the second conference champion, Royal Tru Orange.

 

            Aside from banging a game-high 31 points, Harris hauled down 22 rebounds and came through with three assists.

 

            But what made Harris’ debut with Crispa all the more remarkable was that he outrebounded the indomitable Otto Moore – 22 to 20 – and played so smoothly with a team whose play patterns he was unfamiliar with.

 

            And Harris admits that despite his crackerjack showing for Crispa against Royal, he felt he had not completely gotten into the swing of the Walk Tall Jeansmakers’ game.

 

            “I’m still trying to blend with the team,” he said, while all around him, his new teammates exulted on the way he had more than ably filled in for Mann, whose contract was rescinded by the Crispa management towards the end of the last PBA conference when it realized it could not get him – despite earnest efforts – to kick his old drug habit.

 

            Harris went on: “It takes a while to blend with a new team. Crispa has an entirely different style from Tanduay. Although both are running teams, I believe Crispa has a little more depth and a little more sock.”

           

            Asked if before Crispa’s game with Royal he received any specific instructions from Coach Dalupan, Harris smiled. “None really. No specific instructions.”

 

            So how was he able to perform so well against Otto Moore, Royal’s dominating slotman?

 

            “Oh that,” he said. “Well, I’ve always felt that to cut down Moore’s effectiveness in the rebounds, you’ve got to box him out. I think I did that tonight.”

 

            On the observation that he appeared to have improved on his field goal performance with Crispa, Harris attributed this to his being able “to take more outside shots with confidence…feeling more at ease taking such shots with Crispa.”

 

 

 

            Along with the veteran Gene Moore, Harris played for the first time with Tanduay in the 1977 second conference but he never finished the season when he suffered an arm injury when the Esquires took on the Toyota Tamaraws in an out of town game in Bacolod.

 

            Last year, it was David Payne who teamed up with Moore for Tanduay, thus Harris was not with the Esquires when they made the finals of the 1978 third conference.

 

            But this time around, things may be different for Harris.

 

            He figures to play in a title playoff – with Crispa.

 

            “I think that if we continue playing the way we did against Royal, we have a pretty good chance of making the finals,” he said.

 

            Asked if his joining Crispa came after long-drawn negotiations, Harris said, “it was not hard reaching a decision to play with Crispa.”

 

            “I understand the whole team voted for me,” he continued. “I can only hope I can keep up the kind of game I played tonight.”

 

            As to his future plans or specifically, if he’d consider to continue playing for Crispa, Harris said, “that depends, but first, we’ve got to talk.”

 

            In his 29-game stint with Tanduay in 1977, Harris averaged 24 points a game, hauled down 282 rebounds, had 22 shot blocks, averaged 47.14% from the field and 66.67% from the free throw line.

 

            In this year’s second conference, he raised his average to 26.62 points per game, was 11^th in the list of rebound leaders with an average of 12.4 rebounds per game, seventh in the list of shot block leaders with 2.4 blocks per game and logged 32 minutes and 26 seconds per game in playing time.

 

            Because Tanduay didn’t make the round of four, Harris sat out the homestretch part of the second conference race. But this time around, he figures to be there and not only there, but at the forefront of Crispa’s vaunted bid to regain a PBA conference championship it last won in 1976.

An Insider's Story: Why the "Absence" of Mon Fernandez, Abe King, Estoy Estrada (Sports Weekly, 1979)

Sports Weekly Magazine

November 30-December 07, 1979

Peter N. Acosta

 

 

Ab’sent (ab-sent) adj. – not present; not in a certain way; away        

                                                                                                                        Webster’s Dictionary

 

            The official line is they’re absent, which means, according to Webster, they’re “not present,” not in a certain place; away….

 

            “Let’s just say they are absent,” said Coach Dante Silverio by way of explaining why, in Toyota’s first game in the third conference against the GIlbey’s Gin, three of the team’s key men. Toyota’s ace Filipino slotman Ramon Fernandez, 1979 All-Filipino most improved player Abe King and veteran forward Ernesto (Estoy) Estrada, Toyota’s 1978 acquisition from Royal – were missing from the Toyota bench.

 

            It was pretty much the same thing when the Tamaraws, after scoring their first win in the series with a crackling 125-120 decision over the upset-minded Gins, went on to their second victory two days later, this time, a 137-113 romp over the Great Taste Discoverers, third place finishers behind Toyota in the second conference.

 

            Pressed once again by the boys along press row why Fernandez, King and Estrada remained out of the Toyota bench, coach Silverio fell back on his previous explanation.

 

            “The official word,” said Dante, “is that they are absent.”

 

 

 

            Other than confining himself to this cryptic remark, the 38-year old Tamaraw coach declined to disclose the real or official reason for the continued absence of the three players from the Toyota bench.

 

            From sources close to the Toyota camp, however, this writer learned that one probable reason Silverio had all but opted not to use the three in the current PBA series where undoubtedly, they could further boost Toyota’s offensive and defensive power and add more depth to the team’s bench, is Dante’s apparent lack of confidence in Fernandez, King and Estrada.

 

            It all began, SWM’s sources said, during the best of five playoffs between Toyota and Royal for the second conference championship eventually won by the Orangemen by the count of three games to one.

           

            SWM’s sources said that a careful review by Silverio of the performances of the three during the series and immediately afterwards when he studied videotapes of the four RTO-Toyota title playoff games led him to conclude that the overall performances of Fernandez, King and Estrada “left a lot to be desired in so far as consistency is concerned.”

 

 

 

            “Osbok (the way Silverio is called by his players) has been in the game too long and is all too familiar with the playing styles, moods and idiosyncracies of his boys to know when any of them is not playing up to par deliberately,”said SWM’s informant.

 

            “Obviously,” he went on, “he discerned such a letdown in the performances of the three players during the playoffs.”

 

            Talking of Dante, the man and the coach, SWM’s informant pointed out that “one thing about Dante is he is the kind of guy who feels that because he has always gone all out to give his players everything they want, he expects nothing less than reciprocity and absolute loyalty from them.”

 

            “He is a very trusting man,” he said, “but once he loses his trust and confidence in you, that’s it, you’re out of his graces.

 

            SWM’s informant believes that more than anything else, it was Dante’s feeling that he can no longer depend on Fernandez, King and Estrada to play every game in the third conference as he believes they should, that primarily led him to shelve all three men if such a move may well mean an uphill struggle by Toyota to go into the finals of a PBA conference which it had won two years in a row – in 1977 and 1978.

 

            “And I can’t blame him,” he said. “After all, what’s the use of having players on the bench whom you can’t trust to deliver or play as they should?”

 

            “It’s hard to say,” said SWM’s informant. “But right now, what best describes their standing in so far as Coach Silverio is concerned is that all three are in the cooler.”

 

            As to how long they’ll be “in the cooler,” he wouldn’t venture a guess. “It all depends on Osbok (Coach Silverio),” he said. “Only he can decide how long the three will remain absent or when they’ll finally be present.”

 

            As things stand, there are thus far no signs that Silverio has relented in his decision to can the three, all of whom hold new three-year playing contracts with Toyota.

 

            A review of Toyota’s rocky performance in its title playoff series with Royal showed that on at least two occasions, Silverio all but blew his top over the performances of several of his key players, notably Fernandez and King.

 

            At one point, he castigated them publicly, airing his ire over their “strange” behavior, especially when in Game 2 of the series the Tamaraws blew a 21-point lead to lose by five points at the windup.

 

            “You saw the first half?” Dante asked a sportswriter after the game. “Beautiful, no? The real Toyota game. And then came that terrible third quarter in six minutes, what we earned we threw away by errors, loose defense and overconfidence.”

 

            In the fourth game of the series, Toyota also led by as much as 21 points before leaving the match and the title, and one notable feature of this encounter was Dante’s decision to put Fernandez on a leash almost all throughout.

 

            It may not have been too apparent then, but the decision that was to stir a lot of speculations in the third conference may have been borne right then and there.

 

 

 

 

            Here’s a chronological account of how Toyota’s Ramon Fernandez, Abe King and Estoy Estrada found themselves in the “cooler.”

 

-       A week after the second conference title playoffs where Toyota lost, three game to one to Royal Tru Orange, the members of the team, including Fernandez, King and Estrada, were called to a practice session at the San Agustin gymnasium.

 

-       After the practice, team trainer “Legs” Legaspi, obviously under instructions from Coach Dante Silverio, informs Fernandez, King and Estrada that they are no longer to report to future practices and games of the team until further notice.

 

-       The following day, the three requested for a meeting with Coach Silverio, apparently to seek an explanation as to why they have been more or less canned. Silverio was busy that day but agrees to meet them the following day.

 

-       At the first face-to-face meeting between Silverio and the three, Dante confronts them with his grave findings regarding the letdown in their performances during their title series with RTO and some key games of Toyota in the past.

 

-       On November 20, the opening of the third conference where Toyota played and won over Gilbey’s Gin, Coach Silverio informs sportswriters who asked him why Fernandez, King and Estrada were not in the Toyota bench that “the official word is that they’re absent.”

 

-       And “absent” the three have been since, although they remain on the team’s payroll and continue to receive their salaries.

The Inside Story: Why Mann Got Dumped (Sports Weekly, 1979)

Sports Weekly Magazine

November 2-9, 1979

Peter N. Acosta

 

 

            It must have been an agonizing decision for Crispa owner and manager, Valeriano (Danny) Floro to make.

 

            The man, after all, has been as much a part of Crispa’s glory-filled year of 1976 as Atoy Co, Bogs Adornado, Philip Cezar and the rest of the team’s talented local performers who made possible the Redmanizers’ unequalled grand slam year in the PBA.

 

            But obviously left with no choice and spurred by the team and the company’s higher interest, Danny finally wielded last week the axe that cut off the celebrated Cyrus Mann from the Crispa ballclub and sent the 6’10 former star of Brazil’s Palmeiras team packing his bags for home.

 

            In an announcement that hardly caught by surprise those privy to the turmoil that had beset the Crispa team, Floro announced that the company had decided to rescind Mann’s playing contract which would have gone on to the third conference.

 

            He gave as the principal reason “the deterioration of Mann’s game,” which he said severely affected Crispa’s semifinal round performance and eventually cost the Redmanizers, winners of the 1979 PBA All-Filipino and a candidate for the grand slam, a berth in the best of five championship playoffs of the second conference.

 

            Breaking his silence for the first time on how things have gone between Mann and the rest of the team since the decline in Mann’s playing condition and ability began to drag down the whole team and all but rendered Crispa a single-import team, Floro said.

 

            “Even before our crucial game with Royal Tru Orange, our players had appealed to us not to field Mann but we still gave him a chance despite this.

 

            The “crucial game” of which Floro spoke was Crispa’s second round game in the double round semis which the Redmanizers needed to win to at least earn a tie for a finals berth.

 

 

 

            But the Redmanizers lost that game, 110-101, and earlier, another crucial encounter with the Toyota Tamaraws whose conquest of RTO last Saturday ultimately gave the Tams the last finals berth while at the same time leaving the Redmanizers out in the cold in the title playoffs for this tournament where they were runner-up last year.

 

            In the game which they lost to Toyota, Mann was only able to contribute six points and three rebounds and was hardly a match for Otto Moore in the battle of rebounds.

 

            In its last semifinal round game with Great Taste, Crispa dispensed with the services of Mann, who, significantly, is listed in the elimination round records as the leader in shot blocks with 73 for 15 games or an average of 4.9 blocks per game.

 

            But although Floro revealed the principal reason for Mann’s ouster from the team, he chose to remain silent on what caused this once dominating figure in the PBA to decline.

 

            From sources inside the Crispa camp, however, SWM learned that even before he had a run-in with his teammates, Mann had been missing a lot of practice games. On the day before Crispa played RTO, SWM learned that Mann refused to jog around the hardcourt when ordered. A confrontation with Coach Baby Dalupan ensued, at the height of which Mann walked out.

 

            SWM’s sources said that repeatedly, Mann had been asked to get into shape, to train, but he repeatedly hedged and gave excuses as well as assurance that he’s fine.

 

            His performance in the semis, however, showed otherwise.

 

            As to what apparently led to the decline in Mann’s condition and his interest to play 100 percent all the time, SWM sources learned one probable reason for this is Mann’s having gone again into the dangerous “habit” which he had embraced in the United States and which many felt was responsible for the delay in his acceptance of Crispa’s invitation for him to play another season with the Redmanizers.

 

            “He just can’t kick that old habit of his,” said one Crispa insider.