Call it the ‘BasketBrawl in Bocaue’.
The FIBA Asia qualifying game between the Philippines and Australia at the Philippine Arena Monday night was marred by a bench-clearing brawl. The following posts should summarize the series of events that took place.
At the moment, FIBA is still taking a closer look at the incident, with the possibility of sanctions and suspensions to be announced in the coming days. Meanwhile, Basketball Australia and the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas issued an official statement with regards to the brawl, while players expressed remorse on social media over their involvement.
This incident became the talk of the sporting world for all the wrong reasons. And as expected many netizens on social media were not happy about a competitive basketball game turning into a wrestling match.
The Philippines-Australia match was aired live on T5N last night and like all live sporting events on Philippine free TV it earned a Parental Guidance (PG) rating from the MTRCB. However, in subsequent rebroadcasts of the match on T5N and AksyonTV, MTRCB gave it a Strong Parental Guidance (SPG) rating for language and violence in light of the incident.
Never before in Philippine television history has a non-combat sporting event earn an SPG rating due to circumstances beyond its control. While live sports is usually attended and watched to by people of all ages, such incidents are sometimes unavoidable and can also be traumatizing.
Still, such untoward incidents would have been prevented had the referees lay down the law and play the peacemaker role between two sides. Unfortunately for the referees in Bocaue, it’s either they are not competent or strict enough to do their job.
That said, this incident between the Philippines and Australia will forever live on in Philippine television infamy, both for its impact and its consequences in the game of basketball. It will be interesting to see what new narratives will come out of this, so stay tuned for further details.
From the Tube 
An embarrasment. Wonder though how this will affect the reputation of the PBA.
We’ll see when the action resumes this afternoon and evening.
I won’t be surprised if only 50-100 show up tonight. They’ll only care for the MPBL.
The Pistons-Pacers Brawl in 2004 aka The Malice at the Palace was much more worse than the Gilas-Australia fiasco, bro.
I beg to differ; this is the worst.
The Detroit Pistons-Indiana Pacers 2004 brawl was MUCH MORE WORSE. I mean, some of the fans there got tangled with the brawling players compared to the Gilas-Australia brawl.
Madaming na-eject sa Bocaue though. Eh sa Detroit? Bilangin mo nga kung ilang players ang na-eject?
Okay Ralph and TIMOWP17, here’s the info.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacers%E2%80%93Pistons_brawl#Charges
BTW Ralph, none of the players on both Detroit and Indiana were ejected nor suspended, the game just ended abruptly. The NBA would serve punishments for players on both sides though.
Pero yung game ng Gilas mas tumatak sa mundo dahil meron nang social media at mas pinagusapan ng madla. Wala masyadong nakaalala nung rambol sa Detroit dahil hindi pa sikat ang wifi at mobile internet noong araw. Kaya yun.
It might be different eras but the ranifications are the same, the Pacers have become a non playoff contender before this decade. So expect Gilas will get the same saction coming from FIBA due to their so called Childish behavior. Aussies “bully” our team doesn’t mean that our boys should do this form of Violence.
Well, we’re still waiting for the decision.
Okay Ralph. BTW I’m going to correct what I wrote on my post. The players on both the Pacers and Pistons were served suspensions (either shortened or for the entire 2004-05 NBA season) and fines by the NBA for their roles in the 2004 brawl. I wonder if both FIBA and SBP will serve similar punishments for the players of both Gilas and Australia.
Antayin mo na lang.
We all know we couldn’t get over and still won’t due to impending potential consequences once the findings will be released within this week, especially the worse part — suspension from membership and loss of participation in basketball in SEA Games next year (just like what happened in 2005) and the hosting rights the FIBA World Cup in 2023.
I don’t it will necessarily come down to that, losing the rights to host the competition, especially with this being an isolated event and the FIBA WC still five years from now. With that said, I could see the team being suspended for a while. There will be sanctions, but at worst I can only see individual players or the team being suspended, but not losing the WC.
Either way, we’ll wait for their decision. I don’t care if it will be harsh though. Let’s just find out from them.
Reminds me of an incident of Pacers and Pistons game
Actually all of us remind the Gilas game of that.
And the fans still though that what the 9 gilas players did was right. That was some bullcrap coming from our fans. No wonder other nations calls us names.
Call it lack of knowledge and intuition. They don’t know a thing or two about playing fair. All they did was to defend and not criticize.