Sports Weekly Magazine
May 23-30, 1980
Peter N. Acosta
It was his 199th game as a pro.
It didn’t seem like the time to be all keyed up, but this was exactly how William (Bogs) Adornado felt when he took the hardcourt last Thursday evening at the Big Dome.
“I was tense,” he said. “I shouldn’t be, but I was really tense.”
It was not difficult to understand why.
The principal reason was what happened to his career two days earlier. In one of the most startling developments of the 1980 PBA season, Adornado, who, since the start of the local pro league in 1975, has always been with Crispa, was acquired in a mid-season deal by U/Tex.
Other than an announcement by PBA Commissioner Leo Prieto on Adornado’s acquisition by U/Tex, no other details of the deal between Crispa and U/Tex were bared.
The presumption, however, was that in acquiring Adornado, U/Tex also bound itself to assume the terms and conditions set forth in Adornado’s playing contract with Crispa and may have thrown in more to get this player whose scoring potential the Wranglers need because, according to Coach Tommy Manotoc, “we execute a lot of pattern plays and we need a shooter like Bogs.”
On the part of Crispa, it was silent on why it let go of Adornado, but the decision must have been a painful one because along with Atoy Co, Philip Cezar, and the other Crispa originals of PBA ’75, Bogs played a key role in bringing about the team’s glory years in the league.
Adornado was with the Redmanizers when they pulled off their now legendary grand slam feat in 1976, a coup that involved a sweep of all the PBA’s three conference championships that year.
But tragically, although he figured prominently in the making of that storied feat, the following season saw Adornado agonizing on the sidelines over a knee injury that he got from an accidental bump by U/Tex’s Romeo Frank, who’s now his teammate.
The incident left him with a torn ligament under the left knee which prevented him from taking off as he used to and from running laterally.
He tried special knee braces just so he can resume playing, but he found the brace (the same one now used by Frank) too heavy for comfort so eventually he decided to have a knee operation.
It was Dr. Antonio C. Rivera, a noted Filipino orthopedic surgeon, who operated on Bogs at the Cardinal Santos hospital in Greenhills, San Juan. The operation only took three hours, but the recuperative period took almost a year and it wasn’t until the All-Filipino conference of 1978 that Bogs was able to return to the hardcourt.
He played 50 games in his comeback year, but because he was used sparingly by Coach Baby Dalupan, he could only manage a 9.48 points per game average, way, way below his old averages of 26.94 in 1975 and 25.66 in the year of the grand slam.
Last season didn’t turn out any better, exposure-wise, for Adornado. Although he saw action in 52 games, he was only good for 10.79 points per game average.
Three months earlier, before the ’79 season opened, Bogs had expressed his disenchantment over his limited use by Coach Dalupan, which he said it may have been responsible for his slow return to his old form, and then had told Sports Weekly Magazine in an exclusive interview that he was seriously considering a transfer “if the terms are right.”
Among the teams that expressed an interest then in Adornado was U/Tex. A week after the 1979 Christmas holidays, Adornado was supposed to have met with Coach Manotoc. But apparently, nothing came out of that because the ’79 season saw Adornado with a new playing contract from Crispa.
The opening of the new PBA season saw Bogs getting more exposure and being sent in during tight spots in lieu of Atoy Co who was blowing hot and cold. He started against Toyota and Tefilin, but then was sidelined for the next three games.
In one of his high scoring nights in the first round, he logged in 19 points against Great Taste but against U/Tex, he had only four points and against Royal Tru Orange, in his last stint with Crispa, he also had four.
From the way things had gone for him in the last round, it seemed like it would be another agonizing year for Adornado, but then came his shift to U/Tex and now, his career has taken on a new turn.
Exposing him as he had never been exposed by Crispa, Coach Manotoc fielded Bogs early and apparently, because of his first-time jitters with his new team, Bogs never really got to his first five tries. He eventually made seven points in the first half.
For U/Tex fans, that performance may have looked like the Wranglers had gotten a “lemon” in acquiring Bogs, but early in the third, he finally exploded.
Popping them in the way he used to during the glory days of Crispa, Adornado helped key a 10-point U/Tex breakaway and when Gilbey’s threatened to come back early in the fourth, he muzzled the threat with two key shots – a three-point goal and a soft jumper.
It was a notable first time up by Bogs with his new team and expectedly, Coach Manotoc was elated.
Although Bogs, according to Manotoc, still seemed out of shape, he said he was confident that Bogs would be “a big help in our bid for a semifinal slot.”
As to why U/Tex got Adornado when his performance chart in the last two seasons showed nothing that would indicate that Bogs still has got that old zing on the firing line, Manotoc said the team needed him because it goes into a lot of pattern plays. And Bogs, the resurrected Bogs, fits very well into the Wranglers’ pattern for victory.
And how does Bogs feel about leading his old ballclub?
Naturally, he said, he was “sad” because he had been with Crispa for such a long time.
But then, he stressed, “I cannot be warming the bench all the time. With more exposure, I know I can still be competitive.”
Like him, the Wrangler camp is also hoping that he could still be, and even more so, that as he gets more and more time on the hardcourt, he’ll regain that shooting touch that made him one of local basketball’s most awesome pop-shooters.