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Pba's Best Teams


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CRISPA and TOYOTA

 

These two teams played many classic battles over the PBA’s first nine seasons, and dominated the PBA landscape by virtually making the three-conference titles a two-team affair. Simply put, they were the two best teams of their era, and among the two best of all time.

 

And since they were such great teams, it was only natural that they measured themselves against each other, because that’s what the great ones do. And out of this obsession to be better than the other, the greatest Philippine basketball rivalry of all time was born.

 

Their very first PBA game, played on May 10, 1975, already gave us a glimpse of what was to come. With only three seconds left, and the Redmanizers already assured of victory, Toyota’s Oscar Rocha punched Crispa’s Bernie Fabiosa. It was the first in what would be a series of fight-marred contests between the two archrivals.

 

Perhaps no other game better typified this spoiling-for-a-fight mood of Toyota-Crispa matches than the one that opened the 1977 PBA season. Crispa narrowly defeated Toyota, 122-121, and afterwards Mon Fernandez and Philip Cezar got into it on the way to the locker rooms. Pretty soon, players from both teams got involved, and the whole thing escalated into a full-blown rumble. Story goes that all the players were detained in Camp Crame overnight.

 

One former Crispa player was recently quoted as saying that their hatred for one another was so intense that if players from one team chanced upon players from another team in a bar, a fight would inevitably break out.

 

Crispa and Toyota were so good that between them they won the first 10 PBA titles, and 11 of the first 12 over the PBA’s first four seasons. During this time span, only the U-Tex Wranglers managed to break the stranglehold with a championship in the ’78 Invitational Conference.

 

All in all, though, Crispa had the edge in total championships, 13-9. In terms of head-to-head matches, the Redmanizers also had more wins, but it was a very close 63-60.

 

As for the players, they also dominated the league’s Most Valuable Player award. From 1975 to 1983, with the exception of 1981, either a Crispa player or a Toyota player was named MVP. Here, the Redmanizers also had the edge, with six of their players winning the MVP compared to two for Toyota.

 

For those who want to know, the MVP winners were Bogs Adornado (1975-76), Freddie Hubalde (1977), Atoy Co (1979), Cezar (1980) and Abet Guidaben (1983) for Crispa; and Robert Jaworski (1978) and Mon Fernandez (1982) for Toyota.

 

After dominating the 1982 season with two titles, the Super Corollas stumbled in 1983 as a power struggle between the team’s two best players — Fernandez and Jaworski — finally boiled over after years of simmering just beneath the surface. Toyota failed to make it to the finals of any of the three conferences, and they were even ousted in the elimination round of the Reinforced Conference. To rub salt on their wounds, their hated rivals completed a Grand Slam, sweeping all three conference titles.

 

The deteriorating economic and political situation eventually took its toll on Crispa as well, and at the end of the ’84 season, they, too, bid the PBA farewell. It was the end of an era, and it was a less-than-ideal way to end a magnificent rivalry.

 

But the two great rivals would get one more chance to write finis on their epic rivalry, although it would come 20 years late. On May 30, 2003, players from both sides — at least those who could still run, jump and shoot — reunited to play each other (and exchange elbows and flying kicks) one last time. Toyota got the last word in on the rivalry, winning, 65-61. Fittingly, the game-winning play featured the two players who feuded during their final season together — Jaworski and Fernandez. With time winding down, and Toyota protecting a slim one-point lead, a grey-haired Fernandez found his old teammate at the top of the three-point circle. And as if it was 1978 all over again, Jaworski calmly buried a three-point shot to lift Toyota to its last win over Crispa.

 

Afterwards, Terry Saldana showed everyone that not much had changed. Interviewed by the press, the former Toyota forward labeled the Crispa players “larong squatter.” Co retorted by challenging Saldana to take a drug test first, while Cezar was more blunt, calling his rival “bobo” (dumb).

 

Now that’s what I call a rivalry.

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