Iced Water Ballin

With little debate, the NBA, time and time again have been deemed as the most progressive sports league in the world. Not only now, in light of the George Floyd - Black Lives Matter movement in the past month, but this has been an occurring theme for most of the NBA's history. This is a topic that is easily bigger than basketball, now more than ever. Suddenly, the league going at a halt due to the Coronavirus matters less for everyone, for good reason. The NBA, having been established in 1946, drafted their first African-American player by the name of Chuck Cooper in the second round of the 1950 draft by the Boston Celtics, making it the third professional sports league on US soil to draft an African-American behind Kenny Washington of the NFL in 1940, and Jackie Robinson of the MLB in 1947, all legends in their respective sports. As of 2015, according to racial equality activist Richard Lapchick, the NBA composes of 74.4% of black players, making it a vast majority of the league. ...

Being in the Philippines, you know without a doubt that basketball is in our veins. From full-packed arenas to watch UAAP, NCAA or PBA games, to pick-up basketball on the side of the road, stopping the game every time a car has to pass. There is no doubt this is the number one sport in the Philippines. We are not the best nation in terms of basketball skill, although we are definitely one of the most passionate, which I believe with drive us to be one of the best in Asia. Growing up in a Spanish family in the Philippines, basketball was not my first sport. Actually, most of my life I was taught to play football, later on switching to baseball and then basketball. My family being huge in sports in general though, we would play all sorts of sports, so it was not as late as you might think. I did start taking basketball seriously in terms of playing pretty late, probably around third year high-school, largely because of my late but dramatic growth spert, from about 5'7 to 6'1 ...