In FIBA World Cup host Philippines, basketball is life

MANILA: It may be dwarfed by other nation’s sporting prowess, but the Philippines’ fervor for basketball is gigantic, and enthusiasm for the sport is only intensifying ahead of the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup, which opens in Manila on Friday.

Basketball is played everywhere and by almost everyone in the Philippines, which counts the sport as a national obsession along with boxing and beauty pageants.

There is a basketball court of sorts set up near most churches, and whether it is in a cemetery or near a sewer, these places of worship are ubiquitous in this majority Catholic nation of 112 million people which is co-hosting the FIBA world championships from Aug. 25-Sept. 10 with Indonesia and Japan.

“We are excited since the tournament will happen here. There are many players from the NBA that we are excited to see,” college student James Froilan Almeda told Reuters near championship venue Mall of Asia Arena. The NBA is the US National Basketball Association.

The Philippines might not clinch the 32-nation championship but it can win some games, added Almeda. FIBA ranks the Philippines men’s team 40th globally and the women’s 42nd. Spain and the US are in the top two spots.

Basketball first came to the Philippines in the 1910s, when it was a US colony. American teachers introduced the game to the public school system, initially just for girls.

The appeal of basketball endured through the decades because of its simplicity, veteran sports anchorman Sev Sarmenta said.

“The love affair with basketball continues,” he told Reuters. “I will give you a backboard right here, I will find a piece of wire, it becomes our ring, I’ll attach it to the wall here and we can play. And it’s a scene repeated many times in many