Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out Freedom of the Four: We Tracked a Radical Experiment in Basketball Nirvana About this episode It is a far-fetched innovation floated by American hoops heads for years: the four-point shot. But as our far-flung correspondent Rafe Bartholomew reports, there is a real-life pilot program afoot — half a world away, in a galaxy-brained league with a half-century's worth of swag: the Philippine Basketball Association. And it's working. We meet the new king of long distance; watch film with a Filipino coaching legend; and then heat-check this cultural exchange with the NBA's preeminent philosopher of the four-pointer.
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2:58 Pablo Torre? I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.
3:03 Speaker 02 Dancing against Ahann Misi. Romeo goes to JT, launches a four. Why not, Gerard? Why not?
3:13 Pablo Torre? Right after this ad.
3:15 Speaker 03 You're listening to Giraffe Kings Network.
3:30 Pablo Torre? What does your dad think of your expertise in Philippine basketball?
3:35 Speaker 04 I think he's used to it now. He was pretty surprised. He came over early, end of 2006, so after I'd been there for a year. And he got a huge kick out of it, because he just was like, what is going on here?
3:46 Pablo Torre? Well, he played ball.
3:47 Speaker 04 Yeah.
3:48 Pablo Torre? So like, that part, I think he understood.
3:49 Speaker 04 He loved that, but I had just been on a telenovela after a terrible role.
3:55 Pablo Torre? We have to explain the fact that you are, in fact, a soap... You're a soap opera star, Rafe.
4:01 Speaker 04 I was Brad, the illegitimate father of...
4:06 Speaker 04 An important character in a show that came out in 2007.
4:10 Pablo Torre? Titled?
4:10 Speaker 04 Bakayang.
4:11 Pablo Torre? Which means?
4:13 Speaker 04 It was her name, the main character's name. It is an extremely offensive premise for a soap opera. About a woman who, by local beauty standards, is not attractive. And resolves to improve her lot in life and have rich kids by finding foreign men.
4:33 Pablo Torre? Such as Brad?
4:34 Speaker 04 Unfortunately, yeah. I was Brad, the almost prototypical ugly American.
4:40 Pablo Torre? Do you remember any of your lines?
4:42 Speaker 04 Get away from me with this baby. I will kill you. Now get out of here and don't ever come back. If you do, I'll kill you.
4:59 Speaker 04 I was speaking, I was ugly American. I was speaking English.
5:03 Pablo Torre? They didn't even use your superpower.
5:04 Speaker 04 Well, back then, it wasn't that super. After a year, I was okay, but still learning, still studying. But like, that was the thing. So my dad visited about a week after my episode where I slapped the lead character came out.
5:18 Pablo Torre? Oh my god, I love this.
5:19 Speaker 04 And children were running up to me and him in the street and being like, Asawan ni Bakayang, you are the husband of Bakayang. And like, Bakit mo sinampal si Bakayang? Why did you slap her? You're so mean. And my dad is like, why do all these people know you? Who are you here? So he came at an opportune time to witness it.
5:41 Pablo Torre? I should explain. You are more than the novelty white guy who speaks Tagalog. You're the foremost expert on Philippine basketball in America. And that is hard for me to bestow you with because it's just not close. But you wrote the book, Pacific Rims, you hosted the docu-series on At Geo. You've written and talked about this for so long that it's just good to have you in studio, man. Thank you for being here.
6:05 Speaker 04 I mean, thank you. I love talking about this. It is, for 20 years, kind of the subject that has most animated me. I've never gotten tired of it, never gotten... Sick of it, never wanted to move on from it. So any chance I get.
6:18 Pablo Torre? I was talking to Daryl Morey, GM of the Rockets, Sixers. And he pointed out to me that there are two countries in the world where basketball is the most popular sport. It is the Philippines and it is Lithuania. And in Lithuania, Rafe, the average Lithuanian is kind of built like you. Average six feet tall, at least over 5'11" is the statistic. The average Filipino man, I'm here to inform our listeners, is about five foot four and change, statistically speaking. But the fact that this is the place where basketball means this much, what's the way that you explain to people how this obsession actually looks?
6:55 Speaker 04 The way that I think most people, if they happen to visit the country, encounter first, when they get off the plane, they're riding in a cab or whatever, they see people playing basketball everywhere in the streets. People dressed in basketball jerseys as almost the standard wear for any man walking around casually on the street. But you see people playing in these really quite nice covered courts, municipal courts that are put up by local governments, where they have nice backboards, full courts, people playing in bare feet, in flip flops.
7:30 Pablo Torre? As much as sneakers are a key part of basketball culture, you go to the Philippines, you don't need some things to be a thriving basketball nirvana. Which is to say that when it comes to the Philippine Basketball Association, I do want to explain to people right from the start here, it is the second oldest league in the world, which I think is shocking if you aren't familiar with the cemeteries where people are playing basketball and the karaoke machines, where they are putting highlights.
7:59 Speaker 04 I can bang out some incredible renditions of Parokia and the Edgar songs on karaoke machines with T-Mac and Kobe highlights playing behind the words.
8:11 Pablo Torre? How do you watch the PBA?
8:13 Speaker 04 Now, there's actually, you can just pay for it. Filipinas Live is the app. But I still have to wake up on the East Coast. Five in the morning.
8:21 Pablo Torre? You've been watching these live?
8:23 Speaker 04 Usually.
8:24 Pablo Torre? Well, the reason we've been asking you, it turns out, to wake up at 5 a.m. to watch the PBA live for now three months is because there has been a rule change that is a radical innovation that the NBA has been sort of talking about in shadowy nerdy back rooms for more than a decade now. And this basketball experiment, which I consider a seminal one in basketball history, has to do with one particular thing.
8:50 Speaker 04 Nothing gets me out of bed in the morning like a four-point shot.
8:54 Pablo Torre? Four pointers at 5 a.m. is a hell of a way to wake up.
8:59 Speaker 04 That might be a slogan for the league.
9:26 Pablo Torre? So before we travel the world for a very international episode, I did want to begin here at home in America with the greatest quote ever said about the four-point shot, which is not on tape anywhere, unfortunately, but does remain seared into my brain. Because back in the early 2000s, a reporter asked the 6'9" Antoine Walker, the Celtics' forward, the All-Star, the completely unrepentant gunner, why he shot so many threes. To which Antoine Walker replied, quote, "Because there are no fours. And there aren't."
10:10 Pablo Torre? Still, not in the NBA, even though the topic of the four-pointer has been debated by members of the league's competition committee and the press for years now. And while it's true that lots of coaches hate this idea, unsurprisingly, I should point out that in 2015, no less than Phil Jackson, one of the greatest coaches ever, proposed the four-point line a few feet behind the current three-point arc. And that same year, friend of PTFO Tom Haberstroh reported a whole column on ESPN.com advocating for the installation of the four. And just last month, actually, while appearing on Jason and Travis Kelsey's podcast, Kaitlyn Clark was asked, quote, What do you think about a four-point line? I love that. Let's do it.
10:55 Pablo Torre? That's actually genius. That is genius. I'm making silver four-point line. And in fact, the inventor of basketball himself, Dr. James Naismith, pitched the idea of the four-pointer more than a century ago now in order to unclog the lane and make the sport of basketball more exciting, which is a familiar business concern a century later. And yet, the oldest professional basketball league in the world, in all of its bureaucracy, was never bold enough, never crazy enough, to rectify Antoine Walker's State of the Union. There are no fours.
11:37 Pablo Torre? But the second-oldest league in the world, which turns exactly 50 years old this year, absolutely was, it turns out. And yes, this was kind of a basketball midlife crisis, you could argue, but all of it makes all the more sense once you understand the history, the physical artifact, to be more specific, that Ray Bartholomew has imported into our studio here today. So before we get to the four-point line and that rule and its impact on the PBA and therefore the NBA, you brought something for us, and I've been resisting just like spending all
12:20 Pablo Torre? day paging through it. Describe it for the audio audience, please.
12:23 Speaker 04 Sure.
12:24 Pablo Torre? What is it?
12:25 Speaker 04 A 1977 yearbook put together by the Crispa Redmanizers, which is one of the
12:32 Speaker 04 True legacy teams of the PBA. They're like the Boston Celtics of that era. They won many of the first championships over the first few years of the league. And I found it in a, in a, a changue, a flea market in Manila. And it was worth every single peso.
12:48 Pablo Torre? And beyond the fact that the guy on the front cover looks like a wedding photo of my dad from the seventies. It's, it's a time machine into a league that has existed for so much longer than I think basketball fans realize. And people should know that this, the PBA has been around.
13:16 Speaker 04 Well, it's, it's 1977. It is, uh, long hair, great mustaches, seventies disco. It is, and, and the PBA was that in that time.
13:27 Pablo Torre? Disco in the Philippines is a thing.
13:28 Speaker 04 The, the PBA was that, that level of flash. Basketball, entertainment and politics, they all sort of mix in this sometimes dangerous, incestuous way, but also extremely glamorous way, especially then when the PBA was probably at the height of its popularity. And it's, it is really just this beautiful time capsule to flip through. Like the team owner sitting there with a giant bottle of beer. Mommy Crispa.
13:58 Pablo Torre? Bell bottoms.
13:59 Speaker 04 Bell bottoms.
14:00 Pablo Torre? Wait, who is this woman?
14:01 Speaker 04 She was the leader of the, the Crispinatics, the, the fan group that went not only to every game for this team, but to practices. I mean, this is one of the, the really endearing and beautiful things about the PBA and Philippine basketball where it's a professional league that also has this really personal touch. Players know their fans, they know them. People would come and bring spaghetti and pancit noodles for, for players on their birthdays. It was, and, and then players would give their fans gifts on their birthdays. It's this really, there's this closeness that still exists to this day between players and fans in the, in the PBA. That is, you'll never see anything like it in the NBA and it's really, it's beautiful.
14:45 Pablo Torre? So if you were to explain how it is that the Philippines got a professional basketball association that is now this year 50 years old, the second oldest in the world, I keep on saying this, how do you explain how that came to be?
14:58 Speaker 04 I mean, it is a story of American colonialism at the beginning. The United States bought the Philippines as a prize after winning the Spanish-American War. The people of the Philippines did not immediately accept that, and they fought another war of basically conquest that the Americans eventually won, a brutal war of attrition, truly ugly history. Then from 1902 until the beginning of World War II, America administered the Philippines as a colonial territory. There was an American governor of the Philippines. Many of the streets in Metro Manila and around the country, you will notice, are still named after people like McKinley, which may or may not be the name of a mountain these days. I don't even know.
15:42 Pablo Torre? Yeah, you could look and find political cartoons from that era of McKinley basically like allegedly educating and civilizing the savages. America's pillaging of the Philippines and the reshaping of the country was traumatic and also the reason why basketball is beloved.
16:03 Speaker 04 Yes, so if you think about this, the first half of the 20th century, the United States is coming in after Spain running the Philippines.
16:11 Pablo Torre? Yeah, why my name happens to be Pablo Torre, for those wondering.
16:14 Speaker 04 The American government decided, we're going to be different by being the soft, gentle colonialists. We're still going to take all the wealth out of the country, but we're the good guys. The basketball side of this story is that the colonial government viewed sports as part of this civilizing mission. So the Philippines wound up getting a very early head start in basketball. Basketball invented in 1891 by James Naismith in Springfield, Massachusetts. It arrives in the Philippine public education curriculum. In 1912, Filipinos wound up learning how to play basketball sort of before the rest of the world, other than the United States, maybe Canada.
16:56 Speaker 04 There was this early culture and real skill and ability in the sport that didn't exist in countries that have since risen and because of greater height, greater wealth, kind of left over the Philippines in terms of international basketball status.
17:13 Pablo Torre? Unfortunately.
17:14 Speaker 04 I agree, unfortunately.
17:15 Pablo Torre? But unsurprisingly.
17:17 Speaker 04 So, the first Olympics to feature basketball as an event, 1936, the Philippines only lost one game in that, to the United States. And due to the weird way they structured the tournament at that time, they lost right before the medal round. But they'd beaten Mexico, which won the bronze. There's always this sense that, man, we could have had a bronze. And then later on, in 1954, the Philippines actually did go on to win a bronze at the World Championships in Brazil. They're still only East Asian country to medal at that level in international competition in basketball. So, and it all builds this real pride and history. In the Philippines, people grow up and are raised with this knowledge that basketball is your sport.
18:01 Pablo Torre? So, when it comes to the PBA and its founding in 75, and this yearbook which you brought us, again, the black and white, beautifully yellowing, heavy cardstock, like, when you, when you go back to that era, what is the level of awareness of like what else is happening in global basketball at that time?
18:17 Speaker 04 Even in the 70s, Filipino fans are aware of the NBA, but they consume it through magazines, they hear of it secondhand, maybe there, a game will, will make it onto TV on tape delay a week after it was played. And that's part of the reason that the Philippines decided, the founders of the PBA got together and said, let's make the leap and create the first all-professional league after the NBA, so we have our own. And the PBA was that, a way to plant the Philippines' flag in the sport and say, we are a great basketball nation too.
18:57 Pablo Torre? Some of the, like, the, the team names are still some of the all-time great, just like cultural artifacts in basketball history. Start with the beer men.
19:07 Speaker 04 San Miguel Beer Man, one of the legacy teams that is still around from that era and plays today, a name like the Beer Man tips off the way that the PBA was organized as a business, which is a marketing vehicle for many of the biggest companies in the country. They, instead of having teams based in different parts of the country, it was a way also to save a little bit of money on travel. The entire league is based in Manila, in the capital, and the teams are owned by the owners of San Miguel Beer, or we're looking at the Crispa Redmanizers. Crispa was a t-shirt company, a textile company, and redmanizing
19:50 Speaker 04 was this word they had come up with for basically making non-shrink t-shirts. So we're the Crispa non-shrink t-shirt champions. I mean, and so many names like this.
20:02 Pablo Torre? I mean, I still, I have a, one of my prized possessions is a Tender Juicy Hot Dogs jersey.
20:08 Speaker 04 Who signed it?
20:09 Pablo Torre? So as you know, Alvin Patrimonio, truly like one of the all-time greats.
20:14 Speaker 04 A four-time MVP.
20:15 Pablo Torre? My cousin used to work at Pure Foods, which is why I have said artifact. But again, Tender Juicy Hot Dogs may be a description of a style of play, also literally a product you get at the supermarket.
20:25 Speaker 04 Right. And the owner of Pure Foods at the time probably liked that every time you went to the supermarket or went to the Sorry, Sorry store, you would see Pure Foods. The Tender Juicy Hot Dogs you saw last night, you know, with Alvin Patrimonio dropping 30 on beautiful little turnarounds in the lane is now, is, I'll take the Pure Foods, right?
20:48 Pablo Torre? Yeah, that bright red hot dog.
20:49 Speaker 04 With the gray insides, there's nothing better. Their history of the names in the Pure Foods franchise is great because they would change it every few years to sell a different product. They were at one point in time the Carne Norte Corned Beef Cowboys.
21:04 Pablo Torre? It does revive me, though. The one PBA game I ever went to in Manila, obviously, was at the Aroneta Coliseum. It was the Talking Textphone Palace. And I had a Spam and Egg sandwich. And I was just like, this is the dream. What's more Filipino than this?
21:16 Speaker 04 And I don't need to tell you this, but some of your listeners might like to know as well. Philippine culture is very, very swagged out and stylish and free-flowing. And there's an improvisational and performative nature that you can sort of track through great performers, great singers, through pop culture, but also in basketball. Basically, there are styles that are completely unique to the country and to individual players, shots and moves that you don't see anywhere else. And they're kind of mind-blowing for American basketball players and fans to see because it's like, we kind of walk in thinking, we invented this, or it was invented in our country. We know everything.
22:00 Speaker 04 You can't teach us anything about this game. Then you see guys doing things you couldn't imagine ever doing.
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25:45 Pablo Torre? So much of the history of globalization in basketball starts with the 92 Dream Team. And it's like, yes, all these NBA stars exported the game by beating the [bleep] out of every other country. And that's how the rest of the world got to love it. But in the Philippines, by the time we get to the 90s and we see like, again, this style in bloom, who is coming to mind and what are their nicknames?
26:06 Speaker 04 So my personal favorite, partly because of the nickname, partly because of the way that he could really, some of his finishes still blow my mind. Verhel Meneses.
26:23 Speaker 04 The aerial voyager. Played for the Swift Mighty Meaties at points in time in his career, as well as the Sunkissed Soda Team. He was one of these players that could just, he really did float.
26:34 Speaker 06 And watch the aerial voyager go. He is up, up, and he is gone.
26:40 Speaker 04 He would get up there and figure out what to do later because he could.
26:45 Pablo Torre? So the aerial voyager was one guy. The Skywalker was a separate person, to be clear.
26:55 Speaker 04 Sanboy Lim, may he rest in peace. He was a hero in a famous 1985 game against a version of the United States. This was not the senior United States team.
27:08 Pablo Torre? Right.
27:09 Speaker 04 But this was in a regional tournament and it was the only time the Philippines has a win like that over any Team USA. And this was not, these were good, Jay Billis was on that team.
27:20 Pablo Torre? E to J.
27:21 Speaker 04 And then the other, sort of the next version of these acrobatic finishers the league produced was Bong Alvarez.
27:32 Speaker 04 Who was known as Mr. Excitement.
27:34 Pablo Torre? Mr. Excitement.
27:35 Speaker 04 Probably dunked better than the other guys, at least in his highlights. Scored 71 points in a game.
27:41 Pablo Torre? Yeah, excitement may have been an understatement, actually.
27:43 Speaker 04 He was playing for a very wholesome branded team owned by the Alaska Milk Company. But this is a milk brand that cared a lot about a family image. And Mr. Excitement, he got shot in the butt outside of a massage parlor in Manila early in the morning.
27:59 Pablo Torre? Whomst among us.
28:00 Speaker 04 And, yeah, and it was time. Certainly Brad from Bahekang has done worse. But Alaska decided to part ways with him and actually made a trade that helps them become the dynasty team of the 1990s.
28:16 Pablo Torre? And so when it comes to all of this competition for the eyeballs, the time of the Filipino basketball fan, what is the state of the union for the PBA right now? As they clearly, with all due apologies to Mr. Excitement, are also in need of their own shot in the ass.
28:31 Speaker 04 The PBA has felt their fans becoming less engaged over time. The league doesn't attract as many fans to PBA arenas as they used to, and that may not be the league's fault. The PBA in the 70s and 80s, really all the way into the early 2000s, was such a prime mover in Philippine pop culture and entertainment. Basketball players were as famous as the most famous singers and actors, and not only were they as famous as politicians, in some cases, they went on to become the politicians. And to lose that status, even if the PBA's business is in many ways pretty healthy, right? I mean, first of all, the team owners mostly care about marketing their product and having
29:15 Speaker 04 it on TV, and now on YouTube and on the internet, and that goal is still achieved. But to feel your status sort of drip away leads them to taking some dramatic measures, looking for that shot in the ass.
29:27 Pablo Torre? Right, and so that shot, the four-point shot, how does this get implemented? When does this happen? How does it happen?
29:33 Speaker 04 So it really starts at last year's PBA All-Star Game, where just for fun, hey, let's put this 27-foot four-point line out there.
29:44 Speaker 02 Four-point play, yes!
29:46 Speaker 04 And maybe the guys will have fun with it, and they did.
29:51 Speaker 02 Four-point play!
29:52 Speaker 04 That game ended up with a guard hitting two four-point shots, and one of them with a foul to send the game into overtime, and then they won it.
30:01 Speaker 02 What a turn of events here.
30:03 Speaker 04 And that ending, I think, put a little seed in the league's head where they thought... Well, if this worked in our All-Star game, why don't we just roll it out for the regular season?
30:12 Pablo Torre? Wait, hold on. Wait, so what about the competition committee equivalent, right? The NBA is a bureaucracy with all of these rulemakers and legislators. The PBA has what as an equivalent?
30:22 Speaker 04 Well, the PBA indeed has its own competition committee. What they didn't do was consult them in this case before the PBA Board of Governors happened to come back and say, "By the way, we have a four-point shot now. We loved it at the All-Star game. We want the game to be as exciting as possible. So, congrats, guys. Have fun with this four-point shot."
30:44 Pablo Torre? So at this point, it's worth mentioning that in the NBA, Rod Thorn, the VP of Basketball Operations for the whole league, he once said, quote, "It would be unbelievable, but you know coaches would go crazy," end quote. And in the PBA, what was the reaction from coaches?
31:00 Speaker 04 That's where the PBA's galaxy brain kicks in. What if we don't ask the coaches? They can't go crazy if we don't ask them. And so, the coaches of the league were not consulted before the Board of Governors announced that there would be a four-point shot. And so, the coaches actually had three weeks to adjust to a new four-point line 27 feet from the rim with their teams that was just going to be painted on the floor in at PBA games.
31:30 Speaker 02 Dancing against Ahn Misi. Romeo goes to JT, launches a four. Why not, Jerome? Why not?
31:39 Speaker 04 So, over those first few months, teams attempted 5.8 fours per game. So, it's slow and they're...
31:46 Pablo Torre? It's a restraint. There's a restraint in that.
31:48 Speaker 04 It's maybe one of the first times I've ever thought about describing an aspect of Philippine basketball with the word restraint. And so, I spoke with one of the most accomplished coaches in the Philippines, period, Chot Reyes, who is the head coach of the talk-in-text Trobangiga in the PBA, but has coached in the league as a head coach since 1993. Today, we just discussed it today as the coaching staff. And Chot said, "You have to guard that four-point line, and you have to do it either without fouling or fouling before the guy gets the shot off." And that's actually the way that Chot wound up losing one game.
32:28 Speaker 07 This is a great game we're witnessing right now.
32:36 Speaker 07 I mean, a 10-point lead with 1 minute left is not safe. The instruction was to foul and give 2 points. So when he didn't foul and Hobson was already in his shooting motion, I already expected the worst. I already expected the worst.
32:53 Speaker 02 Switch ball screens. Don't give an opening. Are you kidding me?
33:03 Pablo Torre? I just love that that's where Scottie Hobson is, by the way. Tennessee's own Scottie Hobson. I'm like, where did he go? He's in the (bleep) Philippines.
33:10 Speaker 04 And that was one of his 2 4-point game winners so far.
33:15 Pablo Torre? But also, like, watching Scottie Hobson casually drain a 4, it doesn't seem like the line's far enough?
33:21 Speaker 04 27 feet, I think, is definitely a little too close for the NBA or NBA-caliber players like Scottie Hobson is right on the fringe of being. And there are lots of players like that out there in the international basketball world. There are too many players in the NBA who could make this shot pretty easily. And there are players, I mean, Steph Curry, Dame Lillard, they're easy to think of.
33:43 Pablo Torre? Oh, I mean, look, the 3-point line, for those not familiar, it's 23 feet, 9 inches, 22 feet in the corners. So like, this is, I mean, we're watching 3's LaMelo ball, I mean, all the time pull up from that form.
33:55 Speaker 04 Absolutely. And players like Steph, Dame, Trey Young have actually had full seasons in their career when their average made 3 came from beyond 27 feet.
34:07 Pablo Torre? Oh, Caitlin Clark could hit this, by the way.
34:08 Speaker 04 Her average made 3 is like 28-something. There are players who, it's not, they're not looking to shoot it from that distance, but if you put a line there...
34:16 Pablo Torre? This is kind of a business opportunity for certain players who are like, "That's a rule that's made for me."
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37:51 Pablo Torre? As I'm marveling at watching Scotty Hobson, I'm remembering that Dickie Simpkins used to play in the PBA. Cedric Sabalos at one point was a beer man, I think.
38:01 Speaker 04 He may still be a beer man at heart.
38:05 Pablo Torre? But the role of what is called the import rave, it's remarkable we've waited this long to say that term of art. But the import in the PBA is a hallowed tradition that I need you to explain to people not familiar.
38:17 Speaker 04 Sure, so since the very beginning of the league, all 50 years ago, PBA teams have traditionally hired one foreign reinforcement player to beef up the local lineups, to add flavor to the game, to bring sort of that American style that especially if you think back to the early days of the PBA, they couldn't just pop on TV and watch great American athletes. So they did the next best thing. Send someone back to the States, find the best players they could, the best players outside of the NBA, and pay them to come play for the PBA.
38:49 Pablo Torre? Right, but there are rules governing how many of these you can have, right? Because again, Philippine basketball has always been proud of itself.
38:57 Speaker 04 They wanted the Goldilocks amount of foreign star, and that, at least in the PBA, turns out to be one player. And they also think about a Goldilocks level of height, just how tall should, because it is a shorter league, right?
39:14 Pablo Torre? Yeah, again, average height for a Filipino man is apparently 5'4" and change.
39:18 Speaker 04 The traditional height limit for an import is 6'6".
39:24 Speaker 04 And so they hire players, and the first thing that they have to do is pass the height test. They measure them every, you get off the plane.
39:33 Pablo Torre? Which is a very different thing to try and be shorter than you really are.
39:38 Speaker 04 Up to the 90s, the league measured imports standing up, but what they found was that there are too many ways to game that system. Players would try to lean a little bit, just to, just to get an extra inch off, or they would bend their knees a little bit. And even though, and there are pictures of this, they would have team and league officials pressing on their knees to try and straighten them out.
40:03 Pablo Torre? Incredible.
40:04 Speaker 04 The players would just hold tight, lock them up, and say, no, this is how I stand.
40:08 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I just, I have, I have computer neck, man. Like, this is just bad posture. What am I gonna do?
40:12 Speaker 04 And so the league's response to this was to move to a system which they measure player imports' heights laying down. So you have to go to the league office and lay down there for them.
40:24 Pablo Torre? And so I'm curious, what do the imports then think of the four-point line?
40:29 Speaker 04 Most of them didn't know it was that the league was gonna have a four-point line when they first got hired, but the traditional role of imports on PBA teams is to be the leading scorer. Get your points, get 30, get 40. So the imports, who are expected to do the most scoring, are also the players who have the brightest green light to put up that shot, and they're also some of the ones who've been the most aggressive in taking it so far.
40:55 Pablo Torre? And our guide, our guide to the world of import psychology around the four-point line, was a guy that I had forgotten about and has sort of existed in the back of my mind as a basketball fan.
41:06 Speaker 08 With the 59th pick in the 2018 NBA draft, the Phoenix Suns select George King.
41:12 Speaker 04 Played college ball at Colorado. He played there with Derrick White. Made it to the league on a couple of 10-day contracts. And again, later in his career with the Dallas Mavericks. Been in the G League, played in Germany, Poland, Israel. Has really-
41:27 Pablo Torre? One of these like 6'6 wings that, yeah, has gotten to play all across the world. Off to Sam Poling.
41:36 Pablo Torre? Spin move from King. That was quite brilliant. Look at him. I'm always curious about this. How does that guy who's played, you know, in Israel, in the G League, in Spain, in Australia, how does he wind up in the Philippines specifically?
41:50 Speaker 04 So in George's case, he was coming off an injury and had been rehabbing and-
41:55 Speaker 09 I didn't have, you know, any real offers in Europe or anywhere like that. I was just at home, keeping myself in shape.
42:02 Speaker 04 Because the team that hired him started the season with another player who was not scoring as much as they needed him to. And then they reached out, you know, they looked around. They actually wanted another player who shares the same agent as George. And that player wound up going to play in another country. And so the agents reached out to the team and said, well, we do have George King. He's 6'6". He fits the mold. He can shoot, he can score.
42:28 Pablo Torre? We do have another guy willing to lay down on a table and be measured.
42:32 Speaker 04 You bet.
42:33 Speaker 09 Bro, literally, you go onto this table. You lay down. There's one guy that's holding your foot there. There's another guy, and I had my hair like this, who's like pushing my hair down to see like, you know, make sure I'm, you know. So that's how they do it, bro. And they're serious about it. They're serious. It's like a boxing weight in. From the time I left my home to the time I landed in Manila, 32 hours. And you go straight to this dag on table. They stretch you. And if you're like off by a quarter, a quarter of an inch, you're back on a plane the other way back home. And they're finding the next guy.
43:08 Speaker 04 And after he goes through that, he's able to go to his first practice and suit up for this team called the Blackwater Bossing.
43:16 Pablo Torre? And I just have to clarify that this is not the military defense contractor.
43:24 Speaker 04 Blackwater in the Philippines is the name of a men's cosmetics company. And Blackwater specifically is, it's like Axe body spray, it's a cologne. And bossing basically means boss. So welcome George King to the Blackwater bossing. You're, you are the bossing of bossings now.
43:40 Pablo Torre? Well, the biggest weapon in his arsenal now as a member of this team is the four pointer. And so how excited is he to, yeah, run and gun with this?
43:47 Speaker 04 Well, he didn't even know that it was part of the league when they hired him, or when he arrived in Manila, or even to tell you the truth, when he went to his first couple of practices with his team. Because that team, which rents its gym space for practice, is not allowed to put a four point line on the practice floors.
44:06 Speaker 09 No, our practice court doesn't have, doesn't have it. Like with this right here, bro, I keep this with me all the time. That painter's tape, so I tried to tape it down in our spot and the security guard, they was like, they was like, nah. Yeah, my coach was like, yeah, yeah, they're not gonna let you do that. And I was like, okay, let's, I believe you, but let's, let's. And then sure enough, they came and took it up. I'm like, you mother.
44:28 Speaker 04 So George King doesn't really find out that he's going to have this potent weapon until he gets to the arena for his first game and finds out it's right there.
44:39 Speaker 09 My team, no one knew what I was, my team didn't know who I was. You know, they didn't know what they were getting.
44:47 Speaker 09 I had so much going on that, you know, I just wanted to make sure I played well.
44:54 Speaker 09 And then, once I got rolling and the game was rolling, you know, my confidence grew.
45:01 Speaker 09 Got some layups, got some post fadeaways, got some middies, got some floaters. I'm out there, I'm scoring, I'm probably, you know, five for six on the field. I got equity, I got house, I got house money, brother. And then a great opportunity came where my man helped and my feet were set behind that, that four and I believe it was Arcade, dialed me up, shoot it, no hesitation.
45:30 Speaker 09 You know, boom, right, right off the plane, hitting four pointers. And then it got to a point where never like enough, all right, time out. And I went down the court hitting this one right here, hitting the crowd, boom, boom. And I could tell like, as I'm walking back to our bench and I'm giving high fives to my teammates and stuff. Cause they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause we like, we got the momentum. I can look and I can tell in some of the eyes like, they looking like, oh, he's, he's kind of good.
45:58 Speaker 04 And it, you hear him talking about it, it's like he discovered this superpower that he had, that no one else was either ballsy enough to do or good enough to do at the same rate that he could.
46:11 Pablo Torre? And so George King, uh, a king, a boss, all of these things. He is leading the league in scoring. And so this is a guy who, who clearly, um, seems to be in favor of this rule change.
46:24 Speaker 04 He is all in on this shot. He attempted more fours than threes. He, and, and once he realized, once it was unlocked for him, he started looking for it. He wanted to step back and shoot fours. He wanted to shoot them as a trailer. But let's talk about that statistic nerd thing for a second here. Forty percent from four is eighty percent on twos. You hear in the NBA, fifty, forty, ninety. What would it be for the, in the PBA with the four point shot? It sounds crazy, shooting twenty-five percent on four pointers.
46:57 Pablo Torre? But it's worth it, it's worth the attempt, it's worth trying to do it. I mean, the guy was, by the way, trying to do it more than six times a game.
47:03 Speaker 04 If he's doing that at forty percent, uh, then yeah, keep shooting them. Why are you only shooting six, George? And as the games went on, he had a few nights where he attempted twelve and thirteen fours. Like he's always in the thirties, which means again, double it for, for twos.
47:17 Pablo Torre? I love the idea that George King has become, he's trying to become a historical figure in Philippine basketball.
47:24 Speaker 04 He became proof of concept for what the PVA is hoping the four-point line could do for the league because all of a sudden, people are like, hey, have you seen this guy making four-pointers, taking them left and right, has this celebration, he's leading them to wins? And it ended up being a sign of what the four-pointer could do if people embrace it and shoot it well.
47:45 Pablo Torre? So at the very end of the season, like, what's that feeling like for him as he's trying to figure out his own future?
47:49 Speaker 04 Right, so he led Blackwater to this place where they almost made the playoffs, and they wound up losing the second-to-last game of the season, which eliminated them officially from the postseason. So on one hand, he is, he's a professional, like, these, especially overseas pros, they make business decisions. And before his final game in that season, he had this moment where he's thinking, should I bother playing this game? It's not, we're not gonna make the playoffs either way, it doesn't matter if we win or lose, should I just save my body? And maybe because of the four-point shot, maybe because of the connection, he felt like he was developing with Philippine basketball in the PVA. For whatever reason, he's looking in the mirror.
48:32 Speaker 09 Brushing my teeth, getting ready to go to the game. And I'm like, who are you, bro? Like, let's see what you got in you. You always wanted to know what it was like to be the man on the team and to be able to shoot and play, basically with freedom. Here you are, what's more, you've never been this free ever in your life. Who knows if you'll ever be in a situation like this where you can come down the court and shoot a four-pointer? That's how I got to, you know, turn that switch on. Fairfield. Gets it to Rosario. George King for four. Gets it. I was ready to go from the jump. The fours, fours in transition. George King for four.
49:16 Speaker 09 George King! But one thing that stuck out for me, that game, I remember having this extreme sense of calm. You ever seen Happy Gilmore? You go to your happy place, I got the ball essentially at the four-point line, and I'm rocking. And everyone in the gym knows what I'm doing, and sure enough, they set a double, and I'm like, you came from the wrong side. And I went to my dagum move, bro. King shoots a four. And drinks a four.
49:47 Pablo Torre? If basketball is an entertainment product that is trying to fight for eyeballs and fans, in an era of load management, this is the [bleep] that you want to see.
49:57 Speaker 04 And at the end of the season, in which George King managed to brand himself as the PBA's first four-point king, complete with a crown celebration, he made his last shot in a 64-point performance on a falling-away four-pointer going towards the baseline. They gave him a pen and a piece of paper and said, "Write down 64 on it", and then had him pose like Wilt Chamberlain after he scored 100 points in the NBA.
50:23 Speaker 09 I was trying to score 100 points. So I actually felt short of what I was trying to do.
50:29 Pablo Torre? Yes, a political savvy befitting, potentially, a future senator.
50:36 Speaker 04 He will need to be naturalized as a Philippine citizen for that to happen.
50:40 Pablo Torre? We have lots of time to legislate all of these changes.
50:56 Pablo Torre? But back here in the United States, Rafe, I did want to point out that we reached out to the NBA to get comment of any kind about the four-pointer. But what the league told us is that their president of league operations now, Byron Spruell, was not available to talk to us because, according to a senior VP at the league office, quote, "Since there has never been any serious conversations about a four-point shot in the NBA, I don't think it'd be worth your or Byron's time to have a discussion about it, so we'll respectfully pass." I don't think they respect the legacy that George King has been building in the Pacific Theater.
51:29 Speaker 04 Well, that's their loss.
51:33 Pablo Torre? But I'm also not surprised. You know, people were irate at Antoine Walker 25 years ago, back when he was the only guy in the league shooting that many threes. Now, of course, that number of threes looks quaint in modern basketball. The three is so popular that it's being blamed for a downturn in overall NBA ratings. So I cannot be shocked to find out that a four-point line, despite all the free-market research the Philippines has conducted for the NBA, isn't coming to the NBA anytime soon. And yeah, that largely unsatisfying sentiment was almost the end of this episode.
52:17 Pablo Torre? I would have said a big thank you to Rafe for his reporting, for his level of care when it comes to telling stories about the Philippines. I also would have recognized at the end that Rafe, not unlike George King, is an import. An import who devoted himself to the quest of mastering a new language in a genuinely life-changing way.
52:38 Speaker 04 I first moved to Manila when I was 23 years old in 2005. I have no idea who I would be today if that never happened. If I never spent those first few years living there, studying the history of basketball, playing with everyone who would pass me a ball. I am who I am because of that experience.
52:59 Pablo Torre? Rafe Bartholomew, author, Philippine basketball fan, Brad. Thanks for doing this, man.
53:07 Speaker 04 Salamat. Salamat din sa'yo.
53:09 Pablo Torre? And that, I think, would have been a pretty nice dismount. Maybe. But then, late in our production process for this episode, something happened. I made contact, finally, with a long-awaited source. A source whose Tagalog isn't quite as good as Rafe Bartholomew's, but I do believe that this source is the only person who could truly complete the arc, the four-point arc of our international story here. Because while the NBA refuses to be swayed by the PBA's revolution... It was obvious at one point that I needed to talk to you, Antoine. So, thank you for taking our call.
53:53 Pablo Torre? The quote, at some point, a reporter asks you, "Why do you shoot so many threes?" And you remember your response? Do you remember your quote exactly?
54:05 Speaker 10 Honestly, I was just like, because there's no fours.
54:09 Speaker 10 To be honest, where I get that from, it was just really spur of the moment, man. I can't even, it was spur of the moment. Um, coming into a practice, just got through party the night before in Austin, our weekend, and it just kinda just came out natural.
54:25 Pablo Torre? Remember anything about what the night before was like?
54:28 Speaker 10 No, probably really a lot of drinking, but it was crazy that it caught on so bad. People really, uh, thought that was a great quote about me.
54:37 Pablo Torre? It's not just a great quote, it's one of the greatest sports quotes of all time.
54:41 Speaker 10 I was leading the league, I think, in three-point attempts, which was uncommon for a big guy back, you know, in the early 2000s. And at that time too, to be honest, I was kinda getting frustrated with being asked the question so much. So it probably was me just being kind of a little a-hole at the time.
55:00 Pablo Torre? But what a kind of irate and sort of hungover Antoine Walker could have never imagined at that time, is that a quarter century after that quote, one of the greatest quotes in sports history, there are actually fours. They just happen to be a few time zones away. Antoine, have you ever been to the Philippines?
55:24 Speaker 10 No.
55:25 Pablo Torre? Okay, are you, what do you, do you know anything about the Philippines? Let me ask you that question.
55:29 Speaker 10 Uh, no.
55:31 Pablo Torre? So I, I, okay, this is, this is where I, I can be of service maybe. In the Philippines, they love basketball. My family's from the Philippines, I can attest to it. Basketball is basically religion there. In the Philippine Basketball Association, Antoine, which is the second oldest basketball league in the world, they have instituted the four-point line, and they've been playing with it all this past season. And they put it at 27 feet out. But one day, okay, I don't know when, I don't know how, I'm taking you to the Philippines, and I'm gonna show you this four-point line, and you're gonna tell me, you're gonna stand behind that line and you tell me then, in that moment, on that day in the future, whether you don't wanna pull up from that four-point line.
56:15 Speaker 10 I wanna see this, watch a game. I would love to.
56:19 Pablo Torre? They would love you in the Philippines, for real. They are truly like the most basketball crazed people.
56:25 Speaker 10 You gotta look that up, man. I would love to come over there.
56:28 Pablo Torre? I'm gonna take you on a tour of the Philippines, man. And, and you're gonna, you're gonna feel at home. I guarantee that.
56:34 Speaker 10 All right. I'm looking forward to it. I have no problem with that.
56:37 Pablo Torre? Can I teach you one word of Tagalog, which is the, uh, language of the Philippines? The word is "mabuhay", and that just means hello. It's a greeting.
56:47 Speaker 10 Oh, mabuhay.
56:48 Pablo Torre? Antoine, you're gonna be, you're gonna be a soap opera star, man. We're gonna take you over there. You're gonna be in soap operas. And then, uh, thank you, uh, salamat.
56:57 Speaker 10 Salamat.
56:58 Pablo Torre? There it is.
56:59 Speaker 10 By the time we go, I'll be a pro.
57:01 Pablo Torre? In so many different ways, Antoine. In so many different ways. Um, Antoine Walker, salamat. We appreciate your time.
57:09 Speaker 10 Thank you. Thank you.
57:19 Pablo Torre? This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.
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