Despite the tumult that saw Crispa forfeit the second conference crown to eventual archrival Toyota and the riots brought about by players’ fights that marred the All Philippine championship, leaders of the newly born Philippine Basketball Association ...
Despite the tumult that saw Crispa forfeit the second conference crown to eventual archrival Toyota and the riots brought about by players’ fights that marred the All Philippine championship, leaders of the newly born Philippine Basketball Association were one in pronouncing its inaugural 1975 Season was a resounding success.
PBA’s 1975 inaugural season. Fifth from left, third row behind trophy is coach DanteInspite, too, that as a result of the third conference rumbles that ended the 1975 Season, then-President Ferdinand Marcos placed the supervision of the country’s and Asia’s first play-for-pay league under the Games and Amusements Board . “Criis over!” PBA founding commissioner Leo Prieto often declared after the season to mean the turbulence the league had encountered were but birth pains in undertakings of this magnitude. Encouraged by the success of the inaugural attempts for the nine teams to shed off their amateur status to form a league that put prize in playing, Prieto said: “We should do better in 1976. We have learned our mistakes, I think we’ve passed the crucial stage of the league.” “As we open the 1976 season of the PBA, it is heartwarming to note that all member organizations are enthusiastically involved and deeply committed to the ideals of the first and only professional basketball aggrupation in the country,” the league’s first president Emerson Coseteng, said in a statement before the opening of the second season. “The successes we have reaped in the previous conference and the public following we have been able to build and sustain for our games are unmistakable signs of progress and stability we have achieved in the brief lifetime of the PBA,” Coseteng, who would have served his second term the year following the opening season, added. Even GAB’S acting chair at that time, Luis Tabuena, a no non-sense player of the famous Letran’s “Murder Inc.” in the NCAA in the 50s then of PAL in the amateur commercial leagues after graduation from college, predicted the PBA was here to stay, contrary to what the doomsayers’ prognosis. Tabuena, the guy who brought to this shore the the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier world heavyweight championship showdown called “Thrilla in Manila,” also in 1975, said: “The PBA goes into its second year of existence amidst great problems and expectations.” “It confronts solutions to various issues, the most important of which, is how to establish discipline. Solutions to these problems touches on the very existence of the association itself.” “The packed attendance in all games all season, however, is proof that basketball remains the most popular sport in the country today. “This fact should serve as encouragement to PBA officials to further improve the conduct of each game to maintain the public confidence and support, “ Tabuena suggested. The GAB had been directed by President Marcos under Presidential Decree No. 871, to supervise the activities of the PBA with the end in view of keeping the sport a clean and wholesome form of entertainment for Filipinos. The President himself, the GAB chair made it clear, was in all-out support of the pro-league and placing it under GAB supervision “not to restrict or stifle the association in the solution of problems and overall supervision of all activities” Prieto and company were right in their perspective, the PBA had survived not only its second season, the year its detractors had diagnosed its death, it went on and would’ve celebrated its 45th anniversary this year had it not for the Covid 19 pandemic that canceled the staging of all sporting activities indefinitely.
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