Sports World Magazine
July 21, 1973
It was a victory that had all the trappings of an old Hollywood script and Cinderella tale.
Here was a team that didn’t even rate a serious look from the experts at the time because it seemed then that it didn’t have what it took to make it all the way to the finals, more so to run away with the title.
And so it went five months ago, the gush of gee whiz prose that was cranked out following Mariwasa’s storybook triumph against the tall odds and a heavily-favored Crispa-Floro ballclub in the best two-of-three finals of the 1973 MICAA All-Filipino basketball series.
Indeed, at that time, in the eyes of both the bleacher fan and the basketball expert, Mariwasa’s victory seemed nothing more than an old story of a gutsy outfit prevailing over the favorite; of a David pulling off an upset over a basketball Goliath.
There was no hint – not even a faint one – that the Mariwasa team, then called the Akai Recorders, might have won not only on account of its own effort to win but probably as a result of the presence in the other team’s linup of players committed to make the breaks turn into Mariwasa’s favor.
Mariwasa, of course, didn’t know it – this unholy alliance among six Crispa players to cut down their usual point output, thus, in effect, loading the deck in Mariwasa’s favor. And so, in so far as the Akais were concerned, theirs was a well-earned, untarnished victory.
Truly, it seemed so and the statistics of the final match underscored the Akais’ mastery almost all the key facets of the game – control of the backboards (34 rebounds against Crispa’s 30), better foul shooting (a 71.42% to Crispa’s 55.55%), less errors (only 11 to Crispa’s 15), and more chances to score (85 field goal attempts to Crispa’s 66).
Mariwasa was down by a point at the half, 38-39, but it forged ahead in the closing minutes on Narciso Bernardo’s clutch shooting to win, 84-80.
In the first game of the best two-of-three series, Mariwasa was also behind by 10 points, 49-39, but it managed to pull off a close 79-77 victory by consistently pressing while the Crispa lineup was running into a spate of errors and lapsing into a shooting slump.
Understandably, Crispa Coach Baby Dalupan was a sore man inside the Crispa lockers when the title series ended with his favored team a loser in two straight games. In an interview with Enrique Gonzales of the Times Journal, Dalupan blamed “bad officiating” and the way his boys “lost their cool” for the stunning setback.
There was no statement issued by Crispa owner Danny Floro that night.
A few weeks later, however, Danny hinted at a Crispa shakeup in the offing and subsequently stunned the world of local basketball with an announcement that he has decided to drop six Crispa mainstays from the team. The six were Danny Florencio, Adriano Papa, Jr., Rudolf Kutch, Virgilio Abarrientos, Reynaldo Alcantara and Ernesto de Leon.
“Why, that’s almost the whole Crispa lineup!” was the remark that greeted Danny Floro’s announcement.
Almost it was because with the ouster of the six, only four of the ten players used by Dalupan in the title series were left. They were Fortunato Co, Rudy Soriano, Danny Pecache, and Johnny Revilla.
In announcing the shakeup during an interview with Sports World last March, Floro bared his pique at the boys he dropped from the team. “Sobra na! (too much),” he said, referring particularly to Papa’s breach of quarters discipline and Florencio’s refusal to follow orders.
As to the others, Floro said “wala nang disiplina (no more discipline).”
SW knew at this time that there was more than met the eye in the drastic step taken by the usually genial Floro against his six boys. But since he refused to comment on “what really was the reason for the ouster” during the interview, the matter was dropped.
An aide of the Crispa team owner said, however, in an aside that “one day, you’ll know the reason why.”
Finally, last week, four months after SW’s interview with Floro, it broke – the “real reason” why Floro all but dismantled his team following its loss to Mariwasa in the MICAA All-Filipino finals.
In a headline story that it ran, ironically enough on Friday the 13th, the Times Journal bared how the six players ousted by Floro last summer admitted having thrown the first game of the best two-of-three pennant series for a fee of Php 3,000 each paid by a gambling syndicate.
The players’ admission, the news story said, was contained in a report submitted by the Metrocom Police Investigation Service to Brig. Gen. Alfredo Montoya, Metrocom commander. According to the report – Papa, Florencio, Kutch, Abarrientos, De Leon and Alcantara – owned their participation in the syndicate’s bid to “manipulate” the result of the Mariwasa-Crispa first game in the MICAA finals twice: the first before the MICAA board then before the MPIS.
The MPIS report cited Papa as saying that two days before the game on February 4, an unidentified man gave him the Php 3,000 in his residence. He was asked to contact the other players. In his statement, Papa also reportedly disclosed that “anomalies in bigtime basketball went on even during the time of Carlos Loyzaga and Lauro Mumar.”
Concluding its report, the MPIS said “the gravity of the offense was such that it undermined the faith of the Filipino people in the No. 1 sport in the country.”
Expectedly, the scandal, the first to hit local basketball, touched off a wave of anger and concern among basketball officials and the media. Councilor Lito Puyat, president of the Basketball Association of the Philippines, convened the 21-man BAP board to a meeting to decide on the sanctions that it would take against the erring cagers.
PAAF President Ambrosio Padilla, a former Olympic basketball player, bemoaned the incident. “It is a very sad day for Philippine basketball,” he said, “but the best we can do now is to do everything possible to avoid a repetition of such a case.”
MICAA President Domingo Itchon served noticed that the association intended to take a hard line against the six former MICAA players. “Any penalty is to be imposed on this case should be more severe than a life suspension (from basketball),” Itchon said.
Acting swiftly to head off the threatening erosion of public confidence in its basketball circuit, the MICAA board slapped a permanent ban on the six erring players and decided to pursue further investigation of other players reported to have committed the same act of dishonesty.
In another move, the MICAA also reminded all the league’s team managers, coaches and players of its rule prohibiting “an official, coach, player, referee, umpire or those connected with the game in some capacity from betting.” Violation of this rule, the MICAA said, will bar the individual concerned from further participation in any game.
The MICAA decision to expand its inquiry into the first scandal ever to hit its popular basketball league apparently stemmed from a disclosure by Capt. Hector Alvarez of the MPIS that “five other Crispa boys” are also involved in the fix.
Capt. Alvarez, who handled the investigation of the scandal, said: “It was established during our investigation of the six Crispa players that five other Crispa boys also received something but no action had been taken against them because our investigation was centered on Papa and his companions.”
