By Lyka Jazmin Dela Cruz and James Emmanuel Santua
The 2021 NBA Playoffs continue to thrill basketball fans and professional players worldwide, including the Meralco Bolts’ Chris Newsome, who delights in his PLDT Home-NBA League Pass.
The PLDT Home-NBA League Pass is the league’s premium service of live game subscription that provides the most complete live and on-demand access to every NBA game during the playoffs, where fans can watch in high definition.
“I live and breathe basketball. So I like to start my days with basketball. I love the fact that I can wake up in the morning, and there is an NBA game on. I can watch not just one, but multiple games because of what the NBA League Pass is now, and you can jump from game to game, which is awesome,” said Newsome in a virtual interview with the Manila Standard.
Newsome said that he uses the NBA League Pass to learn and improve his personal game as he thinks about how he can apply the things he observes from NBA players. He added that by watching NBA games, the viewers, especially kids and aspiring basketball players, could gain more knowledge about the game of basketball.
“You can learn from how the best basketball players in the world actually play. The great thing about League Pass is that it makes you feel that you are there. You can hear what the players are saying, and how the coaches are strategizing. They also have quizzes and different segments, and you can change camera angles. It is a fully interactive experience,” he said.
Strong connectivity is the key for Newsome during the pandemic as it connects him to his family abroad and it also helped him and his teammates continue their training virtually, that’s why Newsome chose PLDT as his internet provider.
“It’s crucial to have good internet access, especially at home. This is our way of communicating and this is our way of working now for a lot of people especially now that we are working from home. That includes a lot of meetings and that is the reality now when we can’t see face-to-face,” Newsome explained.
He also shared that PLDT helped him to be productive during the pandemic, by reading articles on the internet or by just watching his previous games to improve himself.
“Online is the only way during this pandemic to be productive to get things done, and me having a good connection here at home has made me 10 times more productive because I really get things done, and I can watch a lot of videos online,” he shared.
Newsome’s basketball journey
Although Newsome’s love for basketball started early due to the influence of his friends and family, he was kind of a late bloomer since there were not many leagues for young basketball hopefuls in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he attended his secondary education at Rio Rancho High School. He did not play basketball until he reached seventh grade, but he helped the Rio Rancho HS Rams win the 5A State Championship in 2007.
“There are no leagues actually from grade school to roughly around 6th grade. There weren’t too many basketball leagues so I played football and other sports because those were the sports that were available,” he said.
Basketball is not an easy path for Newsome as he was able to face many challenges before he succeeded in this field, but he believes that basketball is his purpose, making him more motivated in the sport he truly loves.
“This truly is my purpose, I feel like this allowed me to do things I never would’ve dreamt I could do in my life. It’s just a simple game, and it’s a game I started playing in my backyard, and here I am on the other side of the world, thousands of miles away from my home.”
Just like other players in the country, playing in the UAAP, PBA and most of all, playing for the national team is a dream come true for Newsome as he always dreamt of playing for the national team when he started playing basketball.
“It is always what I dreamt of, playing for the country, wearing a Pilipinas jersey. Even before I went to Ateneo, I was actually dreaming of that, and it happened which is kind of awesome. That was one of the happiest moments of my life when I won that gold medal from the SEA Games, even just being called in to be considered for the pool to play for that tournament, I was already happy,” he shared.
His first move in the Philippines
It was not easy for Newsome to leave his family abroad behind but he risked being away from his home for the opportunity to play basketball in the Philippines. Aside from that, Newsome only knows a little about the Philippines making it even tougher for him.
“It was tough because I didn’t know Filipino, I didn’t know Tagalog, my mom didn’t speak Tagalog to me when I was growing up, but it was all part of the jump and the risk I had to take. I always grew up knowing I was a Filipino because of my family,” he said.