Sports Weekly Magazine
December 29, 1978 to January 05, 1979 issue
Like his friend and coach, Dante Silverio, Toyota’s Sonny Jaworski says he “can’t ask for more” with what he got out of sports year, ’89.
“It has been a memorable year,” he said, as he savored, along with the other members of the Toyota ballclub, the heady brew of the Tamaraws’ success In the PBA season that just came to close with Toyota as the league’s only two-time champion team for 1978.
But while his teammates actually partook of the bubbly that flowed at the Toyota party as if tomorrow Moet et Chandon would be going out of style, the man whom just about every basketball expert believes was the one who provided Toyota with the direction that enabled the Tams to hold sway in the All-Filipino and third conferences of the local pro league, settled for a glass of soda pop.
He also didn’t hang on till the wee hours, saying as he bade goodbye to everyone, that he had an early day tomorrow.
But the season is over, someone said.
To which Sonny said, smiling: “To a pro, a season is never over.”
True, and never truer than in the case of a pro’s pro like Jaworski, who credits his consistently heads-up performance in the ’78 PBA season which earned for him the coveted MVP award for the All-Filipino and later in the year, his selection as “Mr. Basketball” to an “almost religious devotion to physical fitness.”
Jaworski recalled that in preparation for his role as quarterback of the Tams in their ’78 campaign, he went into a physical conditioning that began not too long after last year’s Christmas holidays and went on the whole season.
The program, he said, consisted of a regular session with weights as well as exercises designed to strengthen the muscles used in the game of basketball and aimed at beefing up the stamina.
“The whole thing, he said, “was not by any means easy because, well we are not as young as we used to be, but the results, I’m happy to say, have been most gratifying.”
By “gratifying,” Jaworski, now 32 and as lean and strong as when he first set out on the road to basketball superstardom, obviously meant the way he made it as an almost hands-down-choice as the most valuable player of the All-Filipino long before the tournament ended with his team as champion.
“Sustained brilliance” was the phrase used to describe Jaworski’s performance in the first conference and the statistics bore out the hosannas heaped on the Jaworski game.
The figures showed Jaworski led the league in assists, was Toyota’s top man in the battle for the rebounds and game-rally came up with the drive and the clutch hits in the key games that the Tamaraws won on their way to the All-Filipino title, Toyota’s second since the 1977 third conference.
In the third conference, which the Tamaraws won on a tough 3-1 decision over the gritty Tanduay Esquires in the best of five pennant playoffs, Jaworski, along with Toyota import, Carl Terry, were the touchstones of the Tamaraws’ devastating running game.
He was also the Tamaraws’ second big man in the offense, averaging 14 points per game in the elimination round which Toyota swept. In the playoffs, Jaworski averaged 17.17 per game, his highest output the 19-point effort that he pulled off as Toyota won the go-ahead third game against the Esquires.
In the fourth game of the playoffs, Jaworski shared centerstage with the flamboyant Carl Terry where he teamed up beautifully with the much assists department to set up the plays that enabled the Tamaraws to lead by as much as 23 points and eventually win by a walk.
Ramon Fernandez was the Tamaraw whose performance approximated Jaworski’s in the third conference, but a lean four-point output by Fernandez in game 2 of the playoffs made the superb Toyota slotman a second choice as team MVP for the series.
Other than the way he stood heads and shoulders over the Filipinos who saw action in PBA ’78, another thing which made Jaworski the biggest name in pro basketball in the year about to close was hi being tapped for a series of promotional campaigns by industrial firms dealing in computer items.
Jaworski did a promo campaign for Cerveza Negra, Tender Leaf tea and Toyota, and towards the end of the year, he was tapped for a TV talk show, entitled “Celebrity.”
Thus, as the man says, he really cannot ask for more with the way things turned out for him in ’78. The only thing that bugs him is what he’ll have to do by way of an encore in ’79.
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