RUMOR: Alaska owner Wilfred Uytengsu blamed the PLDT group for ‘poisoning’ LA Tenorio’s mind with trade rumors that when he finally decided to trade his star player, the Aces’ owner turned around and made the deal with the San Miguel block.
FACTS: Noli Eala was perhaps the last person in the PBA who felt he had a shot at getting Tenorio when the week began. In a revealing tweet at the conclusion of one of the most intricate trades in league history, San Miguel Corp.’s director for sports said on his account @NoliEala: “While we didn’t expect any more trades, LA offer came to us. It was a deal hard to pass up and even harder to put together.”
If you’re familiar by now with Eala’s penchant for talking in encrypted terms, you’ll know his tweets are a lot more ‘loaded’ than you would ordinarily think.
To better understand the trade that went down on Friday, you have to look back on how it all started. It was triggered by a rare outpouring of sentiment from Tenorio who told scribes in Taipei that, until his game-winning heroics at the Jones Cup, he had been in “low spirits’ because he received word that Alaska, again, had been trying to trade him.
“Of course, as a player, you are surprised that no one even told you,” Tenorio told scribes. “I have been a solid supporter (of the Alaska coaching staff led by Luigi Trillo), and that’s what hurt me the most.”
Those words led to a tense and uneasy situation at the Alaska camp when Tenorio got back from Taipei – a supposedly proud moment for the franchise turning into an awkward situation, and the tension was palpable as soon as the Jones Cup hero walked into Alaska’s practice at the Reyes gym.
A meeting called to resolve the issue apparently didn’t go down nicely, as a standoff soon ensured over Tenorio’s desire to join Gilas in its next campaign in the Fiba Asia Cup in Tokyo.
In the days leading to the trade, the dispute over Tenorio’s insistence on joining Gilas in Tokyo – and Alaska’s stand that he better not – became the focal point of the controversy. It wasn’t. The truth was, the Tokyo standoff was no more than a fallout from the real conflict, which soon became untenable enough to force Alaska’s hand to trade its best player.
Alaska officials, who requested that they not be quoted, admitted there indeed were talks of a trade involving Tenorio in the days before the draft. But they insisted that, one, there were no trade negotiations involving Tenorio while the point guard was in Taipei and, two, they preferred that all confidential trade talks be kept confidential, especially to the person involved.
When word of the trade reached Tenorio, it was easy to blame the PLDT group, for the simple reason that it is the same group that runs the Gilas program and kept Tenorio company in Taipei. Word also reached the Alaska camp that talks of Tenorio’s impending move to a ‘Talk ‘N Text uniform’ rang loud during the victory party for Gilas hosted by the same group.
Sought for comment, Gilas coach and former Talk ‘N Text mentor Chot Reyes denied any knowledge. “Don’t know about that,” he told Spin.ph in a terse message.
Whether true or not, it was clear that scenario influenced the stunning chain of events that led to Tenorio’s move to Ginebra.
Ordinarily, the SMC group would be the last team to enter Uytengsu’s mind if he wanted to gift a team with his most valuable player, especially with the wounds caused by former Alaska coach Tim Cone’s dubious transfer to SMC-controlled B-Meg (now San Mig Coffee) still far from healed. Uytengsu is also the most vocal critic of multiple ownership of teams in the league.
Whether it was out of spite or not, Mr. Wilfred is not saying. But in a move that left everybody stunned, Uytengsu soon turned around and offered Tenorio to SMC, which moved heaven and earth and – with the help of its ever-reliable conduits in trades – completed the biggest deal in this offseason.
