Champions at last: The Knicks and their FilAm connection
By Wendell Gaa
I have been watching on various news outlets the outpouring of elation among New Yorkers following the victory of the New York Knicks in this year’s NBA finals.
I couldn’t help but likewise feel a sense of sensation and excitement for the team’s well-earned victory which has surely been a long time coming since their last NBA Championship won way back in 1973.
Now, I’ve never claimed to be a basketball expert or sports guru, and I’ve personally considered the Los Angeles Lakers to be my personal best NBA team ever, but the city of New York has been a constant stomping ground and second home for my family and myself throughout the past decades. It was in the Big Apple, where my younger brother and I, both elementary school children then, had lived with my parents during the early to mid-1980s, when my father the late Ambassador Willy C. Gaa had served as a Consul at the Philippine Consulate General in New York.
At our living room in our house in Palisades, N.Y., I vaguely remember seeing my dad, who was a huge sports fan, watching on TV the Knicks play whenever there were NBA games being screened. Although at such a young age I still did not quite yet understand the mechanics of basketball, I found myself rooting for the Knicks given that they were representing the very city where we were living in at the time.
Years later during the late 1990s, it was shortly after my father’s two-year term (1997-1999) as the Consul General in New York had ended due to his recall back to the home office of the Department of Foreign Affairs, when I then had a wider appreciation for the sport of basketball, the NBA and the New York Knicks team. Up to that point when I was a fresh university graduate, I began my professional life initially with the private sector being based in Elmhurst, Queens.
While getting together with some family friends over summer barbecue meals, I’d be fascinated and entranced watching televised games of the New York Knicks facing off against the San Antonio Spurs in the 1999 NBA Finals. Without making it sound as if I was simply jumping on the “fan bandwagon,” watching this particular team which composed of players Latrell Sprewell, Larry Johnson, Allan Houston, Marcus Camby and others competing as the underdogs due to the injury of star athlete Patrick Ewing gave me a genuine surge of excitement as I watched my friends jubilantly cheer the team on as the Knicks impressively soldiered through the NBA Playoffs despite a 4-1 loss to the Spurs that year.
Moving on to the early 2010s when I had yet again returned to New York, where this time I had been assigned as a diplomatic attaché with the Philippine Consulate General, I admittedly got caught up in the “Linsanity” phenomenon. It was during the 2011-2012 NBA season when Jeremy Lin, the first NBA player of Chinese-descent, had led an amazing streak of game wins for the Knicks. Seeing an athlete of Asian descent make such impressive gains in the NBA made me hope that this occurrence was no fluke. Now fast forward to today, I’m happy to say that a fluke it surely wasn’t!
As I watched the highlights of this year’s NBA Finals, seeing the Knicks with a fantastic team roster including no less than Finals MVP Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and Karl Anthony-Townes, among others overcome the Spurs, I was more than delighted to see how one of our own, FilAm Jordan Clarkson, contributed to the victory of the Knicks in winning the big prize.
It brought back sweet memories of my time with the New York Consulate General when in one of my last events which I helped the consulate organize, we hosted a community meet-and-greet forum with Clarkson in early 2017.
Although he was still quite new in the NBA as a team member of the LA Lakers during that period, it was still exhilarating to know how a player with Filipino blood was active in the most recognizable and iconic basketball association in the world. And representing a nation renowned for its passion for the sport of basketball, this was truly something significant.
Now that Clarkson has achieved that prized goal of being the first NBA player of Filipino descent to win an NBA Championship, there should no longer be any doubt to how high and how far the potential and talent of our Filipino basketball athletes can go. Clarkson has proven from his latest triumphant accomplishment that in the sport of basketball, our players are here to stay, excel, and win!
