Toyota's Giant-Killing Binge: First Canada, Then Yugoslavia (Sports Weekly, 1978)

Sports Weekly Magazine

September 29, 1978

On the Line, Vic Villafranca

 

                                        

 

As if they didn’t have enough problems trying to catch the now-crowded last bus in the semifinal round of the PBA’s second conference, Toyota’s Tamaraws found themselves walking the gangplank against the Canadian and Yugoslavian national teams in non-PBA games at the Araneta Coliseum.

 

The matches were meant to be tune-ups for the Canadians and Yugoslavians who are playing in the world amateur basketball championships scheduled to start next week. But for the Tamaraws who didn’t have anything to gain from the whole exercise, it seemed like an unnecessary distraction in their bid to pump themselves up physically and mentally for their pivotal games in the south against Royal Tru Orange and Tanduay.
 

 

But having committed themselves to play, the Tamaraws really didn’t have a choice but to go through the motions of playing unwilling sacrificial lambs.

 

“What,” says an old-time PBA watcher, “if one of Dante’s imports got bumped pretty bad? Or what if Jaworski lands on his back again, won’t that spoil the chances of Toyota against Royal and Tanduay?

 

The inference is that if at all, the Tamaraws won’t really play hard against both foreign teams, just enough to make the folks in the bleachers go home with the tale that they saw a ballgame and not a ballet, an honest-to-goodness hardcourt encounter, and not a fencing exhibition. Surprisingly, things didn’t turn out that way.

 

Playing as if they were playing for all the marbles in the world and not merely to make BAP President Lito Puyat feel good on a weekend, the Tamaraws went hammer and thongs, helter and skelter, full system and all systems go against their taller and heavier opponents to give just about everyone in the crowded Big Dome an excuse to go home with a bad case of sore throat.

 

When, after being down by 10 points at the half which closed at 36-46 in favor of the Canadians, the Tamaraws stormed their way to a 82-all tie with a little over four minutes left in the ballgame and then went on from there to unload clutch hits. It was as if New Year had come ahead of schedule.

 

The whole coliseum flew into a tizzy, national pride ran rampant in the jampacked stands, and while it was true Toyota Coach Dante Silverio never got to be kissed on both cheeks by the enthused fans, he got an ovation that ought to make up for all the gloom that has been his lot since the start of the PBA second conference.

 

“Beautiful, just beautiful,” said a sportscaster, carried away by it all. Later, at the players’ locker room, the Tamaraws’ two American imports, Bruce King and Carl Terry, as well as Jaworski and Arnaiz, were hard-pressed beating off fans who wanted to pump their shooting hands black and blue.

 

It was Terry who gave the Tamaraws the lead with 14 seconds left and then Jaworski iced the whole thing when he drew a foul after intercepting a throw-in by the Canadian side. Sonny knocked in both of his free throws for the eventual 92-88 Toyota victory.

 

Coming as it did an hour after the Czechoslovakian team all but waltzed its way to a 105-70 win over a Philippine team and before second-ranked Yugoslavia walloped Crispa, 108-92, the coup pulled off by Toyota made up for both dampers, the rout of the Philippine team especially.

 

Two nights later, Toyota stunned Yugoslavia by five, 118-113.

 

 

 

It was, as the Express’ Ernie Gonzales wrote, “a big blow for the Philippine Basketball Association.”

 

Pinched for space, Ernie never got to expand what in his view was the significance of the victory, but was obvious that he meant to point out that if the BAP had consented to the inclusion of top local pros in the national team, we ought to be able to come up with a showing that won’t make the local bleacher crowd feel like walking out sore and sullen in the rain. We probably won’t win all our games but at least, it will give the hometown folks something to cheer about, something to make everybody feel that it isn’t a flock of sheep that we sent to the world basketball arena but a gaggle of lions.

 

Of course, it’s too late now to do anything. But, gosh, can you just imagine how things might have been if we had Jaworski and company in the national lineup? It probably won’t mean that we’ll knock the favored entries in the world basketball series bowlegged, but one thing we ought to get farther than the slaughterhouse.

 

The PBA hardcourt show goes on the road this week with the semifinal hopes of two of the four teams billed in out-of-town games hanging in the balance in the league’s southern swing.

 

The two are Toyota and Royal Tru Orange who are scheduled to clash in Iloilo and the go separate ways – Toyota via the slow boat to Bacolod to play Tanduay and Royal to Cebu to take on the Crispa Redmanizers.

 

The key game in the series is the Toyota-Royal matchup. Up with identical 7-5 won-loss cards, the Orangemen and the Tamaraws need at least a split to earn at least a tie for a round of four berth. Thus, whoever wins in Iloilo will have a jump on the other. The Iloilo loser, on the one hand, could be in real trouble because it will only be a setback away from outright elimination from the semifinal race.

 

It seems farfetched, but there could be a change in the semifinal picture and most likely a playoff if Tanduay and Crispa, who are tied with eight wins each, are to bomb out twice in their Southern schedules. Crispa, particularly, will be in a bind because while Tanduay has an 8-3 slate, Crispa is 8-4.

 

At any rate, despite the exhibition series of some of the teams playing entered in the world cagefest in the South, the games to watch will be the PBA matches in Iloilo, Bacolod and Cebu.

 

NOBODY ASKED ME, BUT….

 

With the opening of the world basketball tournament next week, the spotlight moves away completely from that other international tournament being held in the Philippines – the long-drawn, now boring world chess championship series between Anatoly Karpov and Victor Korchnoi…I never realized how much laughts I’ve missed until I watched the telecast of the NBA games and compared it to the Arcilla-Eduque show on Channel 4…More and more, it’s beginning to look as if it’s curtains for Danny Florencio and his pro basketball career…Just once, I’d like to hear TV basketball analyst Tito Eduque say “bad call” everytime one of the PBA refs makes a really bad call.

 

JPM Notes:

 

1.     A riveting and vivid memory of the Toyota-Canada game happened in the first few seconds of the game when, right after tip-off, Jaworski made a barreling drive against Tom Bishop which startled the Canadian. It was the Big J’s strong message that he will not be bullied by the stronger, bigger Canadians.

 

2.    Canada was coached by Jack Donohue and had the likes of Bishop, Leo Rautins, Jay Triano and former Honda Hagibis import, Jim Zoet in the lineup. They eventually ended up 6^th overall in the 1978 FIBA World Championship.

 

3.    Yugoslavia won the 1978 FIBA Championship, three weeks after absorbing a stinging loss to the Toyota Tamaraws. It’s starting unit was perceived to be the best in the tournament – PG Zoran Slavnic, SG Dragan Kikanovic, SF Drazen Dalipagic, PF Mirza Delibasic and C Kresimir Cosic. Kikanovic, Dalipagic and Cosic made it to the All-Tournament First Team.

 

Toyota: Back on Top and How (Sports Weekly, 1977)

Sports Weekly Magazine

December 23-30, 1977

Vic Villafranca

 

 

IT had been a long, agonizing trip back to the mountaintop.

 

The last time they were there was two years and 28 days ago, on November 20, 1975, when they upended their arch rivals, the Crispa Redmanizers, 115-102, in the third game of their best of three pennant playoffs to make it two conference titles in a row in the maiden year of the PBA.

 

After those two intoxicating stints as PBA champs, however, a feat which placed them in the vantage position of scoring the league’s first grand slam, things went downhill for Dante Silverio and his glamourous Toyota Tamaraws.

 

The skid began in the 1975 season’s third conference when, after figuring in a 2-2 tie with Crispa in a best of five title series, they lost the deciding game, 96 to 91.

 

With that setback went Toyota’s dreams of a first ever grand slam in the local pro basketball circuit, a dream which, in the second year, would turn into a nightmare as the Tamaraws went through the agony of three title showdowns without emerging as a winner in any one of them.

 

 

 

In the 1976 first conference, they lost, 3-1, to the Redmanizers. In the second conference, it was the same story as Crispa own the first two games of the playoffs, lost the third and then came back strong in the fourth game to win, three games to one.

 

In the third conference, the Tamaraws looked as if they’ve got it made in their bid to break Crispa’s design for a grand slam when they won the first two games of the playoffs, 110-90, and 118-117, and moved to only a win away from the championship.

 

But then, unexplainably, incredibly, they got skulled three times in a row by the back-against-the-wall Redmanizers, and a season which could at least have ended on a joyous note for Toyota turned into a bitter, empty year.

 

“That was a bad year,” conceded a Toyota team official, “a real nightmare.”

 

If ’76 was bad for Toyota, however, the first three quarters of this year’s PBA season was worse for the Tamaraws as two times, in the first and second conferences of the PBA, they missed the bus to the finals.

 

In both conferences, they suffered the ignominy of merely being a sidelines spectator as two other teams – the Mariwasa Hondas in the first conference and the U/Tex Wranglers in the second – tried but failed to put an end to Crispa’s title winning streak.

 

Twice though, the Tamaraws won their third-place playoffs – against the Tanduay Esquires in the first conference and against the Seven-Up Uncolas in the second.

 

After finishing first in the league twice and second five times, those two third place finishes had certainly been a terrible comedown for the Tamaraws.

 

It was enough to send a man up against the wall but surprisingly, there was no hint of despair nor resignation in the way Toyota Coach Dante Silverio took the string of setbacks.

 

As he told Sports Weekly once: “Sing no sad songs for the boys. They may be down today but they will never be out.”

 

Dante said this in the gloom of the Toyota dugout after his ballclub had muffed its chances of being in the second conference finals with a painful setback to Crispa in a sudden-death playoff held to decide U/Tex’s opponent for the title.

 

Turning his thoughts to the third and last conference of the PBA for the year, Dante vowed, “Don’t worry, we’ll be back.”

 

And back indeed, the Tamaraws went, and not only back, but back with a vengeance, as they fiercely fought their way back to prominence in the PBA.

 

The first team to feel the sting of Toyota’s surge back to pennant contention was Presto which the Tamaraws mangled, 167 to 134. After Presto came the fast-starting Tanduay Esquires whom they stopped, 122-114.

 

Then it was time for their middle of the qualifying round date with the Crispa Redmanizers. Like Toyota holder of a 2-0 win-loss record when they went in to their match with their arch rivals, the Redmanizers never stood a chance against the Tams’ new-found firepower and walked off the hardcourt a loser by nine points, 117-108.

 

For their fourth win, the Tams crushed U/Tex, 131-114. For win no. 5, they pulled an overtime win over the unpredictable Mariwasa Hondas, 143-139.

 

Up against the visiting Brazilians in their sixth game in the elims, the Tams lost, 127-106, but a 134-126 win over the other foreign team in the series, the Australian Panthers, and they had it wrapped up – their first trip to the finals since December of ’76.

 

For their pennant playoff opponent, the Tams drew the only team to emerge from the elims with a clean 7-0 slate – the Emtex Sacronels of Brazil – and the Tams could not have chosen a more tortuous way back to the mountaintop than the route offered via a decision over the tall and heavy Brazilians.

 

“This is going to be tough,” said a grim Coach Silverio on the eve of Toyota’s first match with the Brazilians in a best of five series for the title. Bu the way his boys played against the Brazilians the next day, people got the impression that Dante might have spoken too soon.

 

 

 

Playing, as Seven-Up Coach and basketball analyst Lauro Mumar put it, “like a team that can’t do anything wrong,” the Tams led the Brazilians by as much as 20 points at one point in the game to coast to a 115-99 triumph at the windup.

 

In game no. 2, the Brazilians bounced back as if determined to make up for the humiliating first game setback but they lost their wind in the fourth quarter to enable Toyota to escape with a five-point, 113-108 win.

 

Thus, was the stage set for Toyota’s re-entry into a world which had eluded it over the past two years – the dazzling world of a PBA champion.

 

Sunday, December 16, the Tamaraws grandly swept back into that world as they ravaged the Brazilians by a smothering 21 points, 129-108 to tuck away the third conference title before a whopping turnout of 7,000 at the Loyola Center in Quezon City.

 

It was Toyota’s 9^th win in 10 games in the series and its third straight over the Brazilians in the playoffs. By taking the title on a sweep, the Tams gave future champs of the PBA an awesome record to shoot at for until the Tams of the third conference came along, no team in the league had accomplished Dante Silverio’s boys pulled off Sunday night.

 

If only on account of the manner the Tams bounced back on top of the league, the long wait for a title could have been worth all those frustrations and empty nights that had been the lot of Toyota since November of ’75.

 

“We finally made it,” said a deliriously happy Coach Silverio amid the New Year’s Eve atmosphere of the Toyota dressing room after the game. “We really tried hard, not only tonight but all throughout the conference.”

 

Forthwith, Silverio went into a round of back pats for the Tams who bore the brunt of Toyota’s successful campaign for the third conference title – Sonny Jaworski, Francis Arnaiz, Ramon Fernandez, John Irving and Bruce King.

 

Said Silverio, “Jaworski, Fernandez and Arnaiz have regained their forms totally and were great supplements to Irving and King, without whom our championship would not have been possible.”

 

But isn’t he forgetting somebody equally important? A newsman wanted to know.

 

“Who?” Silverio said, suddenly looking worried.

 

“The coach, that’s who,” said the newsman, and indeed, looking back, Dante deserves to join his stars up there on centerstage as they take their bows if only for the way he brought the Tamaraws out of the depths of the 1977 PBA season and back to the spotlight.