Dear China,
First of all, your jerseys are a direct rip-off of Spain's jersey design. I'm sure you're all aware of that. Spain has been using that jersey design for quite some time now.
Secondly, congratulations on winning the FIBA Asia Championship. Your carefully strategized dirty tactics worked to perfection. Which tactics you ask? Let me point some of them out for you.
- 2 days ago, you moved the Philippines vs. *Japan game to a later time. The later a game starts, the later of course it ends. This reduced the amount of rest time our players had before heading to the Philippines vs. China game.
- You delayed the Gilas' electric bus that would take them from their hotel to the stadium. Less warm up time for our Filipino cagers!
- Tickets were not given to some of the assistant coaches of the Philippines.
- During warm ups, one of your Chinese officials went to "fix" the hoop at the Gilas' side of the court. Warm up time reduced again!
- The officials were so in favor of you that Gilas players might have thought they were in a MasterChef finale instead of
the FIBA Asia Championships. The officiating, especially in the early parts of the game were the most outrageous calls and non-calls I've ever seen in my entire life of watching pro basketball tournaments.
I'm sure there are many more that weren't seen in the coverage, or even in the web.
Lastly, in a simple game of basketball, you showed the whole world what your true colors are.
And we, the Filipino people thank you for proving this to us.
We hope the FIBA Committee investigates on this, to avoid it from happening to other countries.
This is not the end of our basketball matchup. We will bounce back. Because that's what we're made of. Yes we are underdogs, and small, and we lost. But at least we lose with pride, dignity and humility. Because we are the type of people who would rather lose clean, than win dirty.
