Sports Weekly Magazine
January 5-12, 1979
Sports for 1978 should have been a momentous one for William (Bogs) Adornado because that was the year when he finally made it back to the hardcourt after a brush with a torn ligament that all but spilled the end of his career. But Adornado, now 26, doesn’t feel that way at all about it.
“Sure,” he told Sports Weekly magazine, “I have every reason to be happy about ’78 because it is the first year of my comeback, but sad to say, things didn’t work out the way I had expected they would be.”
By this, he explained, he meant that as much as he wanted to come back with a bang and regain his old place of prominence on the Crispa lineup, he was only able to gain so much mileage in his bid to prove to himself and his fans that the Bogs of old is really back.
He then recalled how at the start of last year’s All-Filipino, the kick-off tournament of the PBA’s 1978 season, he was ready and raring to assume his old role as one of the most dreaded hit men in the Crispa team; how physically and mentally, he was primed to show everyone that all is well again with him.
So, what happened?
“Well,” he said, “you saw what happened. Until the third conference where we played off with the U/Tex Wranglers for third place, I never got the game time exposure that I felt I needed and which, in my view, would have symbolized Coach’s (Dalupan’s) confidence in my ability to play as well as I did in the past.”
He was quick to add, though that “he hasn’t got anything” against Coach Dalupan, nor was he questioning Dalupan’s decision to use him sparingly in the first and second conferences and all the way up to the first two games of the third conferences’ qualifying rounds.
“Maybe he thought I really was not prepared to play as hard and as long as I used to,” he said. “Maybe he thought that I shouldn’t be rushed on the road in my comeback.”
Still, Adornado feels that if only he had been exposed more, if he had been given more playing time, he would have been able to prove that the injury which sidelined him for almost three years is now a thing of the past.
He said that from the time he made his way back to the hardcourt after the long layoff during which he underwent surgery at the Cardinal Santos Memorial Hospital and then therapy, he could feel it in his bones that all he needed were the breaks to make his comeback momentous. But he never got such breaks.
Bogs then recalled several games of Crispa, including the exhibition series where Crispa played the rest of the PBA stars, where after waxing hot with his shots, he would suddenly find himself being lifted.
“Again,” he said, “I’m not questioning the reasons of Coach for pulling me out even when I’m hot, but then you can just imagine how things like these are liable to shake up a man’s composure.”
(Of one game which Adornado cited, Sports Weekly columnist Vic Villafranca recalled the Cebu game of the Crispa-All Stars series last summer where Adornado, after hitting five for five from the field, was pulled out by Coach Dalupan).
(Asked why he did this, Dalupan said that although Bogs went great guns in the offense, he was a liability in the defense. By this, Baby inferred that although Bogs really was popping them in from his favorite angles, he was a drag on the team in so far as defense was concerned).
A review of the road taken by Bogs on his comeback trail showed him scoring 10 points in the first game in PBA ’78 as Crispa bowed to U/Tex in the All-Filipino and then going on from there to score his first 20-pointer of the season as Crispa scuttled Honda in the second round of the series’ elimination round.
Other than that 20-point explosion, however, Adornado struggled all throughout the All-Filipino.
It was pretty much the same thing in the second conference, where Crispa lost out to U/Tex in the best of five title playoffs.
In the third conference where he was used often obviously as a consequence of Atoy Co’s being sidelined after the third game of the eliminations, Adornado exploded with 25 points in the first game of the Crispa-U/Tex third place playoffs, had 16 points in the second and another 16-pointer in the third match.
That performance, says Adornado, shows that he has come around full circle and that all it needs is to make him stay longer in the game. But he doubts whether he’ll get this. “Alam mo naman, pagbalik na ng mga stars naming, banko na naman tayo,” he said.
Apparently, Bogs is not at all happy with the way things worked out for him in his first comeback year, and that largely on account of this, he may be prompted to switch to another ballclub which would find a better use for his services.
Is he really thinking of splitting from Crispa?
“Maraming offer,” he said, “marami, but I haven’t made up my mind.”