By Leobert Julian A. de la Peña
The current Gilas Pilipinas program director is the newest talk of the town after his surprising comments about the officiating in the PBA.
In his recent outing in the Coaches Unfiltered Show, coach Tab Baldwin was talking about his thoughts regarding the PBA, and later on, tackled different matters.
Baldwin slammed the PBA’s officiating, emphasizing that a foul for a local player is not the same with the calls they make for an import and later on said that what the locals get are too disadvantageous.
Later on, while talking Baldwin moved on and expounded his take with the PBA’s inclusion of imports in two of their three conferences.
“As an industry here, we have one major, major flaw in the basketball landscape of the Philippines and it’s a regulatory flaw and that is that in the PBA, we have 3 conferences and 2 of those conferences are a single-import conference. This is a big mistake. We should never have a single import playing on a team. Further, we should never have a single import that is given all of the rules latitude that the imports are given here by the referees and by the administration of the PBA and I do believe it is by the administration,” Baldwin commented.
As he went on, Baldwin then raised a question as to why imports here in the Philippines put up monstrous numbers but in the other leagues can’t post the same stats they do in the PBA.
Baldwin then connected it to his statement regarding the officiating in the big league, citing that it is because calls are advantageous to imports compared to the locals.
PBA commissioner Willie Marcial then said that Baldwin should face the consequences of his remarks regarding the league.
“We’re trying to give the players and coaches of the PBA family confidence and then this happens. What coach Tab did was wrong timing. He could have talked to me. He could have talked to his head coach, Bong Ravena. He could have talked to our chairman and the governor of Talk ‘N Text, chairman Ricky Vargas,” said Marcial.
Marcial concluded saying that they are planning to penalize coach Baldwin with a fine and a suspension as part of the PBA because he is under TNT.
“We’ll discuss with the technical committee how much we’re going to fine him and if there will be a suspension,” Marcial said in closing.
