The Night Toyota Made It 2 for '78 (Sports Weekly, 1978)

Sports Weekly Magazine

December 29, 1978 to January 05, 1979 issue

Peter N. Acosta

 

 

(Editor’s note: This game took place two days after Sports Weekly Magazine went to press last week for its Christmas week issue. Thus, our inability ot feature it – despite its significance – as our Game of the Week the last time around.)

 

The banner, the only one, first flustered in the stands when Toyota’s Big 3 – Francis Arnaiz, Ramon Fernandez and Sonny Jaworski – strung up an eight-point cluster to give the Tamaraws an 8-0 lead two minutes after the first quarter began.

 

But other than that solitary flag, there was nothing in the Toyota camp’s posture in game 4 of the best of five playoffs for the PBA’s third and last conference title of the year that would indicate that the Tamaraws’ fans felt this was “it”: the night when the Tams would finally make it back to the top of the conference they ruled last year.

 

As Toyota’s pinch-hitting coach, Fort Acuña, himself said: “Sure, we’re up, 2-1, but in a series like this, nothing is sure until the final whistle had blown and the scoreboard shows we’ve got it made.”

 

Old friends of Toyota who had earlier called the office of Toyota coach on vacation Dante Silverio to inquire where the victory party will be held were advised: “No plans yet. Anyway, it’s easy to stage a bash once we’re there.”

 

Toyota’s feeling of uncertainty despite its having won two games of the best of five playoffs to move a win away from the title figured.

 

For although the Tams won game 3 by 10 points after dropping the second game to the tough Tanduay Esquires, it was by no means a look-me-no-hands triumph.

 

Tough as nails since they came out swinging in their first-ever fling in a PBA title showdown, the Esquires had made the Tams work hard for the two wins posted by Toyota and now with their backs against the wall, they were expected to make it doubly tougher for Toyota.

 

But right off, when they got caught with their pistols in their pockets by an all-out Toyota barrage that sent them down by 8-0 after two minutes in the first quarter and then by 15 points, 30 to 15 at the end of the period, the Esquires were on the ropes.

 

 

 

Their problem was further compounded by the awful plight of their key import, Gene Moore, who, although he managed to play in game 4, just wasn’t his old aggressive self in both the defense and the battles for the rebound as a result of his still sprained right ankle.

 

With Moore in such dire straits, Carlos (Primero) Terry had a ball for the whole night, pumping in a game-high 36 points, hauling down 15 rebounds, making one assist, three blocks and two steals to lead the Tams to a 108-98 triumph.

 

For his part, Terry’s partner, second year Toyota import Bruce (Sky) King was equally as devastating against Tanduay’s David Payne as he came up with 19 rebounds to dramatize Toyota’s control of the boards and the match.

 

Despite the margin of their victory, however, the Tams felt the pressure all the way.

 

More so when in the final quarter, the Esquires inched to within 10 points off Toyota’s lead four times and then once to eight points before Terry, Jaworski and Bruce King put the game on ice with a 6-2 blast that sent the Tams beyond recall, 106-94, with the time down to 1:46.

 

Another twinner by Terry on a slam dunk against a pair of hits by Payne and the Tams had got it – the fourth game win that wrapped up Toyota’s fifth championship in a four-year PBA campaign, the second for the Tams in the 1978 season.

With the game and the title in the bag, the Tamaraw camp finally whooped it up, letting go of a cloudburst of confetti with only a minute left in the game.

 

The Toyota victory bash, however, was not held until two nights later.

 

The win elated Dante Silverio, who said it proved that the Tams could be competitive “so long as they give their best.” Adding that he prepared the team for a grand slam year in ’78, Dante said that although Toyota didn’t make its goal, he couldn’t ask for more.

 

Along with rookie Coach Acuña, Silverio got the traditional victory ride from his jubilant players.

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.

 

So Guess Who’s Highest Paid Toyota Tamaraw? (Sports Weekly, 1978)

Sports Weekly Magazine

September 29-October 6, 1978

 

 

 

            With his position of prominence in the Toyota ballclub, it would seem as if the Tamaraws’ take-charge guy and the winner of the “most valuable player” award in the last PBA All-Filipino series, Robert (Sonny) Jaworski, would be drawing – at the very least – a five-figure monthly paycheck.

 

            But it is not so, according to the official figures of the Games and Amusements Board on the salary of each member of the Toyota team based on the contracts furnished the GAB by the PBA.

 

            In fact, Jaworski is not even the highest-paid player in the Tamaraw lineup, the GAB figures show. The highest paid is Ernesto (Estoy) Estrada, the former Royal Tru Orange star forward picked up by the Tamaraws from Filmanbank following Filmanbank’s purchase of Seven-Up’s PBA franchise early this year.

 

            Estrada, who holds a 22-month contract with Toyota starting April, 1978 and due to expire January 31, 1979, receives Php 6,000 from Toyota.

 

            Estrada’s pay is PHp 1,000 more than the pay scale of the team’s original “Big Three” – Jaworski, Ramon Fernandez and Francis Arnaiz – who were listed in the GAB list as receiving Php 5,000 a month each. The current contracts of Jaworski, Fernandez and Arnaiz started April, 1977, and like Estrada’s, are also scheduled to expire January 31, 1979.

 

            After Estrada, Jaworski Fernandez and Arnaiz, the next highest paid Tamaraw player is Nicanor Bulaong, whose salary is listed at Php 3,500 a month.

 

            After the Php 3,500 a month Bulaong comes a bunch receiving Php 2,500-a-month salaries, namely, Fort Acuña, Quirino Salazar and, would you believe, Danilo Florencio?

 

            There is, however, one possible explanation for what appears to be a low scale for a player of Florencio’s stature. Since Toyota only absorbed Danny’s Seven-Up contract when Florencio was acquired by Filmanbank, this meant that Toyota was not obligated to pay Florencio higher than what he was getting in his old contract, which was absorbed by Toyota, and which won’t be expiring until April, 1979.

 

            Then, there is this fact that when Toyota got Florencio, it paid off U/Tex, Florencio’s old ballclub (before Seven-Up), the amount of Php 100,000, reportedly corresponding to Florencio’s advances from U/Tex.

 

 

 

            After the team’s top four highest paid players and the three receiving Php 2,500, the GAB figures show the rest of the players in the Tamaraws’ lineup with Php 2,000-a-month salaries. These are Pablo Javier, Abe King, Jr., Emerito Legaspi, Jesus Sta. Maria and Oscar Rocha.

 

            Rocha no longer sees action with the Tamaraws, but he is still listed in the team roster and is presumed to be still receiving his Php 2,000 a month because his contract won’t run out until January 31, 1979.

 

            Computed annually, this is how the yearly pay rate of each Tamaraw shapes up:

 

            Estoy Estrada, Php 72,000; Sonny Jaworski, Francis Arnaiz and Ramon Fernandez, Php 60,000; Nicanor Bulaong, Php 42,000; Fortunato Acuña, Danny Florencio and Rino Salazar, Php 30,000; Pablo Javier, Abe King, Emer Legaspi, Jess Sta. Maria, and Oscar Rocha, Php 24,000.

 

            The same annual computation shows Toyota’s yearly expenditure for the salaries of its players at Php 504,000. In comparison, Crispa, the first team featured in this series, has an annual outlay of Php 353,700 for the salaries of its players.

 

 

Finally, Toyota Got It but Via the Hard Way to Top of PBA All-Filipino (Sports Weekly, 1978)

Sports Weekly Magazine

July 21-28, 1978

On the Line, Vic Villafranca

 

 

“You asked for it. You got it.” – Toyota slogan.

 

Finally, last Saturday, on its 22^nd playdate, 91 days after it opened its campaign and two weeks after it sputtered and floundered in the semifinal round and made Coach Dante Silverio seemed like a very old man at 39, Toyota “got it” – the 1978 PBA All-Filipino championship, the coveted, most prestigious local pro circuit title that has eluded Toyota these past three years.

 

It was the Tamaraws’ second straight title in six months, their fourth since the PBA’s fledgling year in 1975 and Silverio’s crackerjack crew of Toyota originals and ’78 recruits pulled off the coup with a pressure-ridden 132-113 victory over Cinderella finalist Filmanbank in the fourth game of the pennant playoffs before a whopping crowd of 15,000 at the Araneta Coliseum.

 

 

 

With the win, the Tamaraws pegged the playoff count in their favor at three games to one, their only loss coming last Thursday when the Bankers got off the floor after dropping their first two games with a stunning 124-117 turnaround triumph.

 

Toyota’s 19-point winning margin in the fourth game should seem to indicate that the Tamaraws danced through it all, but as a still tense, still drawn Coach Silverio at the windup: “it’s been a hard game….a hard campaign…and you better believe that.”

 

It really has been that kind of a season for the touted Tamaraws since they got bumped by defending champion Crispa towards the tail-end of the first round eliminations of the double-round qualifying tilts for the semifinals.

 

Their 13-point, 123-110 setback to their arch arivals didn’t actually blur the Tams’ first round won-loss record since all that it did was to pull down Toyota’s slate to the same level as Crispa’s at 6-1, but the jarring defeat left a dent in the ’78 Tamaraws’ widely-hailed armor of invincibility.

 

It showed that the supercharged Tams were only human, after all, and in the second round, in an out-of-town match in Davao City, it was the pesky Tanduay Esquires who showed up the Toyota machine for what it was not – flawless, finely-tuned and purring – when they pulled the rugs from under Toyota, 133-128.

 

 

 

The Tams somehow made up for that sneak punch by Tanduay by turning its wrath and mangling the Crispa Redmanizers in the last game of the second round, 158-127, and things got to be shaky for Toyota.

 

In their second round game, the Tams got even with Tanduay, 137-125, but then two days later, came their crippling 143-127 loss to the Redmanizers, and they were in a bind, serious enough to dump them by the wayside should they suffer another setback.

 

With two losses against only one win, the Tams must now win all their three games in the second round to figure in the finals, a feat which at that stage seemed unlikely with the way the Tams had sputtered and hiccupped and had generally done everything short of self-destruction in the first round.

 

It was set to be sure, the lowest point in what earlier in the season had looked like a no-sweat Toyota trip to the finals, and both the friends and critics of Coach Silverio didn’t lose any opportunity to condole with him. Silverio himself conceded that things really looked bleak for his ballclub at that stage, although he made it clear that he was not about ready to throw in a towel or to put in a call ot the nearest undertaker.

 

As he grittily put it: “We may be in trouble, but we’re not dead.”

 

Brave words these, coming from a man whose team had its back against the wall and its left foot in the grave, but it probably indicates – more than anything else – Silverio’s confidence in the resiliency of his outfit.

 

And true enough, the Tams staved off outright elimination by bouncing back against Filmanbank in the second round, 143-124, and then making it two wins over Tanduay in the semis, 166-147.

 

In the meantime, while Toyota was snapping out of its first round death wish, Crispa was plunging towards what eventually would lead to the Redmanizers’ inglorious exit as a shoo-in finalist with two successive losses – first to Tanduay, 105-102, and then to Filmanbank, 103-101.

 

For its part, Filmanbank went 1-1 for the second round and a 3-2 overall to move only a win away from qualifying in the finals. To make it, the Bankers had only to get past Tanduay. This, they did to hurl the other game between Crispa and Toyota into a sudden death, it’s-you-or-I matchup.

 

In the end, it was Toyota which survived, winning by eight points, 116-108, to move into the finals against Filmanbank and write finish to the dynastic reign of the Redmanizers in the All-Filipino series of the PBA.

 

Stretching the momentum of the winning stride that it picked up in the second half of the semis into the pennant playoffs, Toyota quickly threatened to take the title on a sweep when it hammered out decisive but hard-played wins in the first two games of the best of five playoffs. But in the third game, just when it seemed as if all that was left for the Tams was to order the bubbly to whoop up its ascendancy as the best All-Filipino ballclub in the PBA, the Bankers threw a damper on the proceedings with a turnaround, 124-117 win.

 

The upset, deftly executed by Coach Lauro Mumar with his effective utilization of the slow break to unhinge Toyota’s swirling fastbreak, set back New Year’s Eve for the Tams and quickly brought back the ghost of their 1975 season when they led 2-0 only to blow the whole thing by losing three straight against Crispa.

 

It was not to be this time around, however, because late in the third quarter of the pressure-packed fourth game, seen by the biggest crowd ever to turn out in the playoffs, just when it appeared as if they would be going through the agony of a monumental fold-up, the Tams sprang back to life to take a seven-point lead at the end of the period and go on from there to bust the game wide open midway in the homestretch. To win looking back on the Bankers, 132-113.

 

It was a crackling comeback by a team which had earlier taken a 17-point lead and then blown it, had once been down by as much as six points, and the Tams who touched it off was Danny Florencio, the sneaky hit man from the old Tanduay Fire Station basketball court who rampaged for 38 pointsa against his former teammates, and, would you believe, Quirino (Rino) Salazar, the one-game wonder of the old YCO Redshirts in the old MICAA who played one of the most stirring walk-on acts in the finals of the series by putting the cuffs on Larry Mumar and knocked in three clutch hits.

 

Earlier, Ramon Fernandez got off 30 points in a centerstage one-on-one battle with Billy Robinson, and Sonny Jaworski ran rings around all his guards to set up the Tams’ dazzling finish. 

 

 

 

The way the Tams pulled away by as much as 20 points going into the last four minutes of the game it would seem as if Toyota had a picnic Saturday evening. But the victory, despite its indecisiveness, was a hard-earned effort.

 

“It wasn’t easy, I’ll tell you that,” said Silverio afterwards, and the way he looked and sounded – with his back drenched in sweat and his voice raspy from yelling and ranting on the sidelines – one knew that Dante really worked himself into a frazzle as he finally got for Toyota’s fans what they’ve been asking over the past three years.

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.