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.
