The unleashing (of sort) of Calvin Abueva

Photo taken during the 2012 PBA draft where Abueva was selected 2nd overall and eventually winning ROY honors

When Calvin Abueva began eviscerating opponents in the pro league with all of his antics, we knew that there's a limit to such misaction that only the league, in some extent his own team, could ever allow. The Beast is living up to a moniker that leaned towards its more undesirable definition. He taunted the league in such time he’s supposed to pass through rookie initiation when he arrived in 2012 giving a screw you facial to the veteran hardliners. He could get the goat out of everyone else in such fashion you begin to question the amount of respect (or lack thereof) he has to the game. He has that villainous juice spewing from all direction that is poisonous enough to change everyone's perception of basketball. 

And it wasn't like the media, basketball fans, and the league itself took it easy on The Beast. He was loathed in every way he crossed paths with the league's darlings and he thrived on that negativity to fuel himself. He's taken the lead antagonist role to commensurate with the natural God-given physical gifts because it's never going to be enough that he devours you in the game. As you think about what just happened on it, it continues to haunt you all the way to your bed. He's all over you, reminding you of the mental lapse you committed because you let him into your head. For all the  maniacal carnage Abueva freed from restraint, his Alaska Aces team, whom by history is known for strutting a prim and proper and disciplined team, went through leaps and bounds in giving up that identity by loving all the crazy shits by the way of Calvin's onslaught. 

Now it struck everybody else now to realize that an ultimate heel in Abueva is being rewarded a stint in Gilas 3.0 that will unravel this September. Beau Belga almost filled in that role two years ago. But Abueva is in entirely different league.

I imagine Abueva doing his Abueva thing in the international stage with the sole purpose of making his antics as a primary asset to a beleaguered Philippine team. Only two years removed from that triumphant FIBA-Asia held here in our soil but now in dire strait of losing all the momentum because of the foolish politicking in commercial basketball. For a country reeling from a loss with an opportunity to host FIBA-World, the buildup in composing the best possible team also went down the drain with that defeat. Abueva, on one hand, posits an intriguing component with his prospective inclusion on the final line up of Gilas. He is the consummate villain which will spell advantage to a Gilas team searching for identity with the absence of its mainstays.

The corporate rivalry or bickering or simply immature display of power is already costly for this Gilas team before it actually strut its stuff. Holding off vital cogs in joining the Philippine team as if these corporate idiots bought these players’ patriotism in a contract reminded us again of the sad state of commercialized sports. It reminded us that after all the gains Philippine basketball achieved in recent memory, it will amount to nothing now because its financial backing is at the mercy of corporate’s whims. Basketball can’t be held hostage forever and what this Gilas can make do is to extract whatever it is worth juicing from the available talents in the pool. Abueva, and the rest of the new faces might be the wild cards to retool the national team and move on from this debauchery.

We always cringe on the very existence of a Calvin Abueva wreaking all sorts of havoc in a league ironically enamored for its own brand of physicality from decades back. While Abueva as a different kind of beast does skate through the borders of controlled physicality and insanity, that doesn't make his potential impact to a Gilas team will be any less great. "Antagal ng uso ng terminong bida-kontrabida" and Calvin is a shot I personally am willing to take when no one, out of expediency, is out there interested in putting the flag first before their name and the idiot franchise that pays their salary. 

The heel could be our new-age hero after all.