Planting the seeds....

It was at the height of the pandemic. 

I was in a middle of finishing an article for my sports blog, Sports Potpourri (sportingpage.blogspot.com) when I received a messenger call from PBA Archives. I thought it may have been a mistaken call made as I've never spoken with PBA Archives even if we've been FB friends since 2014. I didn't answer immediately, expecting him to cancel the call right away.

But after a few more rings, I realized he, who I learned is Aris Garcia as his real name, may actually want to talk to me. I picked up the phone and, true enough, he struck a conversation. 

At first, I thought the purpose of his call was to consult me on a few historical tidbits. But for someone who had all the resources at his reach, it didn't seem likely. Soon, the convo extended and we both realized we had a lot of things in common, apart from our passion in sports.

We both live in the south, he grew up in the Parañaque area where I've been staying since 1992, and shared the same dream of spreading accurate historical information on Philippine sports, basketball in particular. 

Aris invited me to come over and check out his collection. I really didn't take the offer seriously then, thinking perhaps there's a catch somewhere. More calls followed and we spoke loosely about Philippine sports history. But given that it was still at the peak of the pandemic, meeting up with someone I only got to know via messenger didn't seem right.

A few months after, on May 13, 2021, I accepted his invitation and went to his office. Proudly showcasing his enormous collection of sports magazines and memorabilia, I was awed. I was like a child in a playground - dazzled by the rich information in front of me. 

Since 2002, I've been writing about sports history online in various sports foras like pba.com.ph, mypba.com, and pinoyexchange.com. Somehow, members who were part of these foras came to know me because of the posts that dwelled on the past. There were times when I would preface my sentence with, "if I recall correctly" or IIRC, because I wasn't sure with some of the particulars. 

Suddenly, I realized that morning that IIRC may be a thing of the past in my vocabulary. With all these magazines, there was a way of validating information that I recall. 

Being a regular buyer of Sports Weekly and Sports World on Fridays, Sports Flash on Thursdays, Champ on Tuesdays and Sports Life on Mondays during my teenage years, it was a pleasant trek towards memory lane. I devoured whatever materials I can lay my hands on. 

Aris was an extremely hospitable host. He allowed me unconditionally to look at all his collection, then later treated me for a morning snack of burger and soda. It was when we were having our snacks when he told me how he wanted to "spread his wealth."

His PBA Archives FB page has reached the maximum 5,000 friends / followers, and at present, we have 196 mutual friends, most of whom are sports personalities and followers who share the same interest. I admitted to Aris that there were a couple of occasions in the past when I needed to validate certain information that I turned to his PBA Archives page. 

But Aris wanted to take things to the next level. He suggested that we collaborate and come up with a project where we can achieve our common objectives. Since both of us do what we do best (he collects, I write) regularly and without compensation, this shared passion can go further if we partnered ourselves to a new venture. 

I told him I have a personal sports blog, where, during times when I just want to express my thoughts, I have a platform to share what I know with others. He proposed that having photos would add a better touch to my articles - a fact I didn't disagree with. 

Except that, if we were to put up a website, we weren't "techies" enough to have our own. Yes, we can put up a free blog, which we did with philippinebasketballdiaries.blogspot.com. It was an avenue for us to share more history to everyone. The idea was for me to provide Aris with a past story, give him the date when the event happened, and he will look for the materials. From there, I will re-type every single word written in these magazines while giving credit to the original writer and the magazine s/he wrote for.

With significant help from my younger brother, Rhuel, we were able to successfully launch this with an August, 1973 article from Game Magazine (1973-micaa-finals-numbers-toyota-comets.html). Soon, 60 more pieces were completed, but re-typing articles can be quite taxing. Aris said that it would be better if I just write my own articles instead. 

But given that I had a new commitment to write for The Rivalry (rivalrynetwork.com), I didn't want to say yes right away. So somehow, the project got derailed. 

But this didn't stop us from pursuing our dream. By this time, we became really good friends. He helped our sports podcast, "An Eternity of Basketball, an online sports program aired live every Saturday at 10AM on FB, YouTube, Spotify and other social media platforms, which I co-host with broadcasters Charlie Cuna, Sid Ventura and Noel Zarate, by providing us with hard-to-find photos of our guests. We were also going to various sports events together - whether it was the Toyota reunions, the BCON, the Hoops Congress, Gilas, PBA  and PBA Legends games, etc. 

Yet, the dream remained. And just when nothing significant was happening, out of nowhere, Aris hooked us up with Jov Li, a customs broker who dabbles into IT programming and owns different websites. Jov was much younger than us, but it seemed to be a perfect partnership given his relative youth puts him in a better position to touch base with followers of his age.

It didn't take long for us to explore the possibility. And one Friday evening, July 21, 2023, the three of us met at Aris' office in Muntinlupa to discuss the plans. Jov wanted to find out exactly what content we wanted to put on the site, and after a few hours, jointly agreed that the website can be done.

And so, here it is. The Philippine Basketball Diaries website, using the URL, gamenatin.com. A product of a three-year dream. A shared passion among three (gentle)men with a common vision of making the website the "richest source of Philippine sports history" in the worldwide web. A site that not only offers pictures and articles, but stories and analysis from different contributors. A platform that glorifies our past heroes so that they won't be forgotten.

Welcome to the Philippine Basketball Diaries...