Night shift realizations
For the past three months, this writer has been trying something new: remote live commentary for European basketball. We’ve been covering the games of the BC Wolves, a new professional basketball team in Lithuania, which hired Filipino guard Juan Gomez de Liaño in October. They joined the European North Basketball League, and have so far played seven regular season games, two friendlies during the final FIBA window, and two quarterfinal matches. Games are played on European time, which means that they are either very late in the evening or very early in the morning in the Philippines. There was a need for live English commentary for the curious and excited Filipino audience. Thus, the action has been streaming exclusively to the Philippines via the BC Wolves Facebook page and YouTube account. Broadcasts start any time from 11 p.m. to 2:30 a.m., depending on the location and accompanying time difference. The most recent game ended at almost 5 a.m. Sunday, an overtime win to send the Wolves into the ENBL semifinals. So far, venues have included Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Israel, Lithuania, Italy and a couple of resort towns on the Baltic coast. We’ve been virtually all over Europe.
It has been a great learning experience. I’ve had to study the teams, research their histories, compile their stats, watch game video, and most importantly, learn how to pronounce names. All part of the job. Though some of my contemporaries have pioneered covering basketball live overseas, and we’ve all done off-tube recording, this is different. Truth be told, it does get kind of lonely sometimes. You sit in the dark in the middle of the night and wonder how many people are with you. In a way, it’s a feeling of being detached from the world. Is this how midnight radio DJs feel? Thankfully, the Wolves’ communications team and Regional Manager Glenmarc Antonio are always there, on the ball, keeping me on my toes, supportive all the way. We work together from at least three different locations across international datelines. That is a powerful feeling of unity.
The biggest consolation is that I get to shut everything down and go to sleep in my bed, in my home. The athletes who actually play the game don’t. They’re really out there, literally, away from friends and family, which is far more courageous. Juan is the first male Filipino athlete playing pro ball in Europe, as Friday Camaclang was in football almost two decades ago, and as Jack Animam was for women’s basketball last year. Playing in Japan, Taiwan and Korea is likewise daunting, but other Asian countries share some commonalities with the Philippines, and are much closer. Five hundred years after Europe discovered the Philippines, Filipino athletes are discovering Europe. There’s a delightful symmetry there.
On the flip side, what we announcers in this situation also feel sometimes is a hint of concern that a parent feels when a child is out in the world, on their own, making their own lives, without their Mom or Dad there to provide protection, comfort, conversation, cheer. I guess we can liken ourselves to the scribes of long ago, telling tales of the feats of heroes who travel long distances to test themselves against the champions of other lands. It lends our profession a sheen of nobility, I suppose. We are there for them, at least some of the time.
Inevitably, the aim is to bring the BC Wolves games to a wider Filipino audience, and for the team to come to the country. Three of their players will likely visit as part of the eighth-ranked Lithuanian men’s team playing in the FIBA World Cup. But the last few weeks have also shown how deeply the team and its management care about their fellow men. They relentlessly do outreach and charity work, providing assistance to ill children, the bullied and the less fortunate, even sending a team on a dangerous mission to distribute basic needs and portable heaters to isolated homes devastated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Lithuania itself was occupied by Russia from World War II until 1990, so this year-old new conflict strikes a deep chord. Sport has allowed the BC Wolves organization to spread compassion and humanity to their kindred. Being able to document their efforts has been an honor, regardless of the outcome of any games. The games are the medium, the instrument, to show that we are, after all, on the same team: the human race.