I LOVE watching the Mahindra Floodbuster in the Philippine Basketball Association. There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing an underdog squad play with desperation to prevail against all odds.
It’s like watching the baseball movie Major League. In that film the team owner traded away the squad’s best players for discards from other teams. Instead of losing games the squad racks up one victory after another to make the playoffs.
There are plenty of similarities with Mahindra.
After a surprising 2015-2016 PBA season, where Mahindra exceeded all expectations and advanced to the playoffs for the first time in franchise history, you’d think management would add quality players so that the team improves even more.
Instead, management jettisons their six best players in the off season and acquires discards from other teams to fill out their roster. Mahindra then loses its first five games in the Philippine Cup.
But just like in the movie Major League, the players and the coaching staff led by coach Chris Gavina, take it upon themselves to meet the challenge and make up for their lack of stars with sheer hard work.
Not having size to compete with the big boys in the league the club has totally embraced small ball as they run on offense and fire away with three-pointers as their primary offensive option.
Nothing drives people to excellence more than hunger. And these players are hungry. Mainly for respect as being among the best basketball players in the country.
Rain or Shine rejects Jeric Teng and Josan Nimes are motivated and hungry for recognition. Rey Guevarra has bounced around the league before being dumped at Mahindra. Mark Yee went the rounds: Burger King, Talk N Text, Meralco and GlobalPort before ending up with Kia which became Mahindra.
Jason Ballesteros started with Meralco, then Barako, went down to the D-League, was called back up to the PBA via Meralco, then went to Blackwater before being dumped to Mahindra. Jason Deutchman, Ryan Arana and Jeckster Apinan have gone the same route.
Even the team’s star player, Alex Mallari, is a Star Hotshots reject.
Mallari orchestrates the Mahindra offense. He penetrates to the hole to score or dish to teammates for crowd-pleasing open triples. He shoots from the outside. He is also a terror at the defensive end with his tenacious long-armed defense.
Then there’s Philip Paniamogan who drilled seven triples en route to a team-high 25 points to power Mahindra past the Meralco Bolts.
Paniamogan has made a career of being underestimated. When he was the star player of Jose Rizal University and terrorized the National Collegiate Athletic Association with his blazing outside shooting everybody questioned him.
He was too small for his position. Too slow. Trigger happy. Liability on defense. Those words were bandied about. After a stellar season in the NCAA he went undrafted in the 2014 PBA draft.
He only made the PBA after GlobalPort took notice of him in a local league in General Santos and signed him up in 2015. He made it to Mahindra as an exchange gift for Mahindra’s top scorer KG Canaleta.
But one thing Paniamogan could do was rip the net to shreds with his deadly outside shooting. And with the Mahindra offense configured the way it was, then there was plenty of room for a fearless gunner.
Right now Mahindra (2 wins, 5 losses) is tied at tenth place with the NLEX Road Warriors (2-5) just ahead of Meralco (2-6) at last place.
Mahindra plays Jan. 18 against TNT KaTropa at the Cuneta Astrodome, Jan. 22 against the Alaska Aces at the PhilSports Arena, Jan. 27 against NLEX at the Cuneta Astrodome and finally Feb. 1 against the Star Hotshots at Cuneta.
They will probably miss the playoffs. So if you like watching exciting basketball with underdog players competing with desperation then you’d better not miss the next few games of Mahindra.
I know I’ll be watching.