Petronas Cup best!

Friday, September 10, 2004

Hi guys! I just came back from watching the Petronas Cup competition at MABA Stadium. Man! It was great! Especially that Oliver guy. He must be the best point guard I've ever seen in Malaysia! Waaait a minute... Do you guys even know what the Petronas Cup tournament is? Hehehe... I'm sure most of you don't know much about it. Well... I'll just take a breather and explain briefly about it.

The Petronas Cup is an annual basketball competition that pits Malaysian state teams, ATM (the army) and Petronas against each other. So, u get a competition like Selangor vs. KL, or Penang vs. Labuan, and so on. But the thing is, in order to play for these state teams, u don't have to be residing in that state at all. The only thing u need to do is to impress the teams' coaches by playing really well in small tournaments like KL Open, MB Cup, and so on. If those coaches like what they see in u, u'll get selected to play in the state team.

And another thing that's unique about this competition is that it's only open to non-Chinese Malaysians. The reason behind this is that MABA wants to promote competitive basketball to races other than Chinese. And also, they want to improve non-Chinese Malaysians' standings in terms of basketball capability, so that they stand head & shoulders with Chinese Malaysians. Ye la, it's very obvious how racially segregated we are in sports. We always associate basketball with Chinese, sepak takraw with Malays, football with Malays & Indians, and so on, right? I think that's why MABA is holding this competition every year. They want to include everyone, even non-Chinese, in basketball.

Bla bla bla... anyway, what I wanted to say was that the Petronas Cup match that I watched just now was great! Well, the game was not that close: Penang won 102-70 against Labuan in the semifinals. Penang, everyone expects them to go to the finals since they have lotsa stars in their team. I'm not gonna name names, coz I know none of u know them at all, but suffice to say they are a very skilled and technical team. As for Labuan, they have one great player, Oliver, who plays the point guard position, but that's just about it. Their other guys are mediocre players, and in that game just now, Oliver was the one doing most of the scoring, while the other guys came up short in their shots, layups, defense, etc. I pity him... he should've joined the Penang team, but I guess there must be some problem that makes him don't play in that star-studded team.

But of course, the team that everyone expects to win the tournament is Petronas, since they have a very talented team with two national players. I have yet to see them, but memang they are gonna play in the final. So, it's set then: Petronas versus Penang in the final match. I hope Penang win!

K guys, I'm gonna sleep now. Bye!


Posted by Nikman Shah at 11:24 pm
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