Bogs vs. Atoy - The Opening Shot of a Shooting Duel (Sports Weekly, 1980)

Sports Weekly Magazine

August 29-September 5, 1980

 

 

            This, then is it – the long-awaited duel under the bright lights of the Big Dome; something like Gun-fight at the OK Corral, part II, the hardcourt version of the “Shootists.”

 

            The protagonists? Crispa’s Fortunato (Atoy) Co and U/Tex’s William (Bogs) Adornado, once Crispa’s dreaded 1-2 punch but now on opposite sides of the fence as a result of Adornado’s acquisition by U/Tex midway in the last conference of the PBA in a Php 100,000 deal that up to now has continued to spark spirited disputes among local basketball fans.

 

            The current invitationals actually is not the first full-length shootout between the two. They have tangled during the first conference, a league eventually won by Adornado’s team, the Wranglers. But things were different then. For Adornado had the advantage of operating under the cover of U/Tex ‘s two imports whom the Wrangler could field at the same time unlike Atoy who didn’t have the same advantage because Crispa and Toyota could only use their imports one at a time.

 

            So the matchup between the two in the Invitationals is “it” – the even-steven shootout between Bogs and Atoy.

 

            It was Co who got off the first draw as the Jeansmakers went up against Nicholas Stoodley in the opening game of the Invitationals. But apparently still unable to fully get over the slump that hit him in the First Conference. Co could only manage an 18-point performance that was only the fourth best individual score by Crispa, as the Jeansmakers pulled off a 103-99 decision over Stoodley, a team composed of pick-up American players from the U.S. West Coast.

 

            Three days later, in the league’s second playdate, Co and Adornado got to meet head-to-head, shot-for-shot as the Jeansmakers took on the Wranglers.

 

            Co’s team won the “war,” coming from 26 points down to score a 99-97 squeaker over a U/Tex team that folded up in the last quarter, but in the personal battle between Atoy and Bogs, it was Adornado who came out on top. While Adornado was pumping in 25 points in a performance that reminded fans about those days when he was chief hit man of Crispa, Co was a picture of frustration almost all the way as attested by this anemic six-point showing.

 

            It was Atoy’s lowest output this season and it could not have come at a worst time – the night o fhis first face-to-face shootout in the Invitationals with his comebacking former teammate.

 

            But very quickly, Co made up for the comedown by coming up with the night’s high of 30 points in Crispa’s losing game two nights later against the tough Adidas-France selection.

 

            That was red-hot shooting Atoy showed against Adidas and it may well mean that the Fortune Cookie is on his way back as Crispa’s principal local bombardier.

 

            If this were really the case, the performances of Co and Adornado in the remaining games of the Invitationals’ double round robin eliminations could turn into an exciting phase of the Co-Adornado shooting duel.

 

 

 

            In the two rounds of the first conference’s elimination series, Co finished way ahead of Adornado with 19.05 points per game average against Adornado’s 13.75. But the statistical fact remains that in the first round, Bogs was still with Crispa. In this round, he only averaged 6.57 points per game. When he moved over to U/Tex, he averaged 19.33.

 

            In the semifinals, Adornado was clearly the better offensive performer than his old shooting partner.

 

            Thus, as both went into the Invitationals, it was Bogs who seemed on the way up and Co still struggling to shake off his shooting woes.

 

            With his 30-point explosion against Adidas, however, Atoy appears to have regained his old shooting form. With Adornado keeping up his almost flawless performance, it perhaps may be said that the duel is heating up, the “new rivalry” between two former teammates hitting a crucial turn.

 

            As to who will manage to come out on top after it’s all over remains anybody’s guess. One thing is sure though. Atoy, the old king of the hit men in the PBA, is not expected to relinquish his crown without making Bogs work hard. And logically, neither will Co’s whole team.

One More for PBA Book of 'Firsts' (Sports Weekly, 1980)

Sports Weekly Magazine

August 29-September 5, 1980

Peter N. Acosta

 

 

            For a season which pad produced more than its share of unusual occurrences, PBA ’80 came up with yet another as Crispa reached for its third straight victory halfway through the double round eliminations of the Invitationals.

 

            The Jeansmakers, winners of their first two games in the series, didn’t make it, blowing a 114-110 decision to the visiting tall and tough Adidas quintet. It was, however, Crispa’s setback that made this a game that will no doubt go down in the PBA’s book of “firsts” but what happened in the closing minute and a half.

           

            It was a stupefying windup.

           

            Consider these:

 

            With 1:28 left in the game clock and Adidas out front by seven points, 109-102, Adidas playing coach Bill Sweek reacted angrily to a mandatory timeout rule after he had called an injury timeout on George Gooden. This was after an earlier foul call had set up Crispa’s Sylvester Cuyler to a stint on the free throw line.

 

            Claiming that he didn’t call a timeout, Sweek banged the officials’ desk with his palms and then kicked a rule book in the air.

 

            For this outburst, Sweek was slapped with two technical fouls by referee Ting Cruz which Atoy Co, playing one of his best games in the series, converted. After which, Cuyler took his turn on the foul line to sink his two free throws.

 

            With that unusual stint from the free throw line which came on two technical and a regular foul committed on a player in the act of shooting, Crispa brought down Adidas’ lead to three, 109-106.

 

            But although losing its coach who was thrown out of the court by referee Cruz, Adidas refused to crack up. On the next play, when the game was resumed after an uproar sparked by Sweek’s tantrum, Gooden, one of the two shortest men in the Adidas lineup, knocked in a short jumper to give his team a five-point lead, 111-106, the time down to 1:11.

 

            Co pumped in one from the side to again close the gap, and it looked like Crispa had a chance to further narrow down Adidas’ lead when the Shoemakers were forced into a violation of the 25-second-must-shoot rule after Co’s shot.

 

            But when Byron “Snake” Jones missed a forced jumper and the 6’5 Randolph Owens made good a three-point stint after scoring and then converting from the 15-foot line on a foul called on Jones, Adidas had the game on ice.

 

 

 

            It was a numbing finish for a Crispa team which, after a slow start, had taken a nine-point lead at the half and then had gone into the last period with a seven-point margin at 90-83.

 

            A 12-4 flurry in the first four minutes of the fourth sent Adidas out front by two, 96-94, and then by seven twice, the last time when playing Coach Sweek went into that costly tantrum that almost cost Adidas the game.

 

            Earlier, Crispa’s Philip Cezar also caused an uproar when he touched off a brief brawl among some spectators in the ringside seats behind the goal after he had reacted violently against a heckler.

 

            Compared to this, however, Sweek’s outburst was something.

 

            Sweek, of course, had an explanation for it. “I never called a timeout,” he declared. “If that was a local rule, they should have informed me about it earlier.”

 

            He was still fuming when he said, but somehow, his ire at having been ejected seemed to have been saved by his team’s victory on two clutch hits by Gooden and Owens.

 

            One thing he can’t understand though, he said, was how it seems his team almost always get a lot of foul calls from the referees. “It’s always been like this,” he said. “We’re supposed to be the taller team, and yet, we get all the fouls.”

 

            With his clutch jump shot, Gooden, a former draftee of the Detroit Pistons in the NBA upped his evening’s total to 20 points, the highest for Adidas. For Crispa, the top man was Co who finally recorded his first 30-point output in the five-team Invitationals.

Enter Adornado, the New Wrangler (Sports Weekly, 1980)

Sports Weekly Magazine

May 23-30, 1980

Peter N. Acosta

 

 

            It was his 199^th 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.

The Toyota Comeback - After Near Heartbreak, A Magnificent Wind-Up (Sports Weekly, 1979)

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.