FIBA Asia Final: Different paths, same result!

KUALA LUMPUR (Mageshwaran's AsiaScope) - Straight to the point! The gold medal game between Iran and Philippines at the 27th FIBA Asia Championship this past Sunday – which Iran won – was not only a crack at the top position in the FIBA Asia pecking order but also a convergence and clash of two completely contrasting courses of development.

Coming as they did the two countries playing the summit clash of FIBA Asia’s blue riband event couldn’t have been more chalk and cheese in the process of achieving it! Obviously, it was a chapter added to basketball history’s longest debate on which method brings success.

On the one side was Iran, coming into the event as the red-hot favorites, presenting the traditional and more systematic method of development. And on the other was Philippines, the obvious crowd favorite, representing a system that is more wide-based and popular.

Iran’s rise in international basketball is one of hard hours of toil in the board rooms translating to on-court performance. The story of the current IRIBF president Mahmoud Mashhoun and his brother Reza, a coach of repute himself, literally searching the rural parts of Iran for capable young men for basketball in the late 1990s certainly deserves a couple of chapters in any book on development.

The two brothers, with enormous support from the administrative system put together a process to spot, search and select talent bringing them together for the age group programs of the National Teams.

That Iran’s first success in international basketball came in an age-group event – the 18th FIBA Asia U18 Championship at Bangalore (India) in 2004 – was the triggering of the success of this development program.

The rest of Iran’s rise in international basketball is well documented.

Filipino basketball, in contrast, is a carbon copy of the American system.

Where there’s the NBA, there’s the PBA. And where there’s the NCAA, there’s the UAAP. And not to forget the millions who play ball on every street corner in Manila! The popular saying in Philippines goes something like this: “If you don’t play ball, what else is left in life!”

There are certainly more youngsters in Philippines who pick the ball as if it was an extension of their hands than in any other country in the world – USA probably an exception – and collectively speaking the Filipinos, unarguably, constitute the largest knowledge base of basketball.

I had this very interesting conversation with one of the volunteers for the 27th FIBA Asia Championship on the interpretations of the rule concerning goal tending, which left me rather pleasantly surprised at the level at which a non-technical person thinks in Philippines about a complex technical issue. Filipinos have basketball in their blood, there’s no doubt in that.

The flip side of this popular form of development is that, it is not always easy to get the best players to play for the National Teams, which certainly is the reason why Philippines have struggled to attain international success in recent times. I am very much convinced of this.

Because when the owners of the PBA franchisees did decide to “allow” their players to suit up for the National Team, the return was in the form of a ticket to the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup to be played in Spain from Aug 30-Sept 14 next year!

Thus, Iran and Philippines brought to the Mall of Asia Arena table their own dish cooked in their own styles. But the feast as they say belonged to the fans.

So long…

S Mageshwaran

FIBA Asia

FIBA's columnists write on a wide range of topics relating to basketball that are of interest to them. The opinions they express are their own and in no way reflect those of FIBA.

FIBA takes no responsibility and gives no guarantees, warranties or representations, implied or otherwise, for the content or accuracy of the content and opinion expressed in the above article.