Sports Weekly Magazine
April 20-27, 1979
Pyke F. Jocson
It isn’t everyday that the PBA gets a prodigious rookie. In comes Arnulfo Tuadles, with the ferocity of Ali and the grace of Comaneci, fresh from the amateur, and the PBA wears a wide smile.
The reason is there, as glaring as a Toyota headlight on a moonless night. The prize recruit from Frigidaire, in this age where the most promising basketeers are kept virgin to the lures of the PBA by surrendering themselves to the MYSD closet, bolted out of the cage asylum to join Toyota and give, whether the PBA accepts it or not, the skidding pro the much-needed push.
Where Mon Cruz, Pol Herrera and Romulo Mamaril are virtually handcuffed, Tuadles is a free bird.
Since last year, Tuadles has been a participant in Toyota practices. Dante Silverio’s long wait for the 6’2 forward-guard was worth it. All the hitches and the headaches which resulted into Tuadles’ release from San Miguel in the MICAA has been a big but silently-talked about issue, with only his being trade for 1978 amateur player of the year, Mon Cruz, coming into surface. It was almost a mission impossible. But Dante did it.
The amateur can now have its MYSD pool. A Tuadles is in the PBA, and wouldn’t this be enough?
That the boyish-looking newcomer is a cinch for the 1979 PBA Rookie of the Year award is a fact that other newcomers like Fritz Gaston, Mon Dizon and Ely Capacio should take with nary a knit on their foreheads.
And what does the Rookie of the Year award really mean?
For Tuadles, it would be a most fitting welcome, a heralded tribute that he is in, and how, in the PBA. Like Gil Cortez, Jimmy Taguines and Jimmy Manansala, PBA rookie awardees for 1976, 1977 and 1978, Tuadles knows that with the award, he will be entering a bigger and more challenging basketball arena.
Tuadles, one of the twelve children of Anastacio and Emiteria Batoon-Tuadles of Danao, Cebu, is 22, and was a national player in the 1975 ABC Games in Bangkok.
“I learned basketball at an early age in Danao through my brothers and cousins,” he said.
The members of the Tuadles brood: Jovy, Luthie, Fred, Marylou, Fe, Arnold, Celso, Jeffrey, Eva, Calvin, Elsa and Eric.
He was discovered while playing for the junior team of Danao Visayan Institute. Recruited to play for University of Visayas high, where he spent two fruitful seasons, Tuadles was voted Most Valuable Player in 1975. For three years, he played for the UV Lancers along with PBA sophomore Marlowe Jacutin who is now with Royal Tru Orange.
“It was Emong Basa who really taught me the rudiments of the game. Before this, I didn’t take my basketball seriously. All I knew then was shoot the ball. Even at an early age, I developed this penchant to try new shots. It was only when I started dreaming of playing side by side with my idols like Jaworski, Paner and Estrada, that I started to take my basketball seriously,” he said.
Tuadles is under a three-year contract with Toyota. One of his favorite possessions nos is a white Toyota Corolla.
Kidded about his sizzling debut against Crispa, Tuadles humbly said it was tsamba.
“Sinuwerte lang,” he said, half-blushing. I’m also thankful I was given the chance.”
With all the hossanahs being sung Tuadles’ way, the friendly Cebuano healthily thinks that “I still have to improve my outside shot. I feel at home with my movements within the keyhole area and undergoal penetrations, it’s really my outside shot which I have to develop some more.”
Queried on why he’s playing a lot better now than in the MICAA, Tuadles had a ready answer.
“While it is true that basketball is a lot tougher and physical in the PBA, there will be a better chance for an offense-oriented operator like me to display my wares in the PBA simply because the amateur still has the zone defense which is harder to penetrate, while in the PBA, sini-single mo ang iyong guwardiya. But it is only in this department na nakakalamang sa hirap ang amateur. Because in the PBA, one has to develop all the aspects of the game. In the PBA, one has to be extra good in both offense and defense.”
Marriage for the good-looking bachelor?
“Not now. I have yet to prove something in my chosen profession. I have to save muna. Girlfriend? Meron na. She just graduated from San Agustin in Iloilo. She’s staying there. When I finally get to save, I’ll bring her to Manila. I plan to settle here. Save more and have a house of my own. I can only do this if I really try hard, devote my time, make sacrifices to be, not only a good pro basketeer, but an esteemed one. I have for my models those basketball players who really have established themselves, thus giving security to their families, like Jaworski, indeed a pro in the real sense of the word.”
The PBA is a bloody battlefield where only those with sterner stuff emerge unfazed. Tuadles knows this. Long before he joined the pro bandwagon, he had fashioned himself in such a way that the PBA won’t be a totally alien place to dribble in.
Toyota is lucky to have the versatile forward-guard. As the Tamaraws’ filler for the void left by the “missing” Danny Florencio, Tuadles has no other way to go but up.
The chance is there. And Tuadles only has to bite. It’s been sometime that the PBA has discovered somebody like Tuadles, somebody who has the grit and daring, somebody who has the knowhow, somebody just perfectly cut for the PBA.
Indeed yes, somebody like Arnold Tuadles.