Scarborough Friendlies All Set

Forget Yao. Tseng Wen-Ting is coming to Manila!

With reports confirming that the Chinese Basketball Association's Shanghai Sharks-- owned by retired NBA star Yao Ming, are all set to play a series of friendlies versus an All Star PBA Selection, basketball is starting to resurface as the country's premier sports that could, at the very least, calm all the hostilities.

Of course, the agreement between the CBA and the Philippine Sports Commission was set about a year ago and not because of the Scarborough Shoal brouhaha-- but either party could've easily pulled the plug on the friendlies due to current events.

Worst-case scenario is the PBA All Stars' coach Tim Cone fielding in his prized power forward Marc Pingris and the Pinoy Sakuragi does what he does best-- get physical, with some sensitive Chinese counterpart. That could trigger a melee. That definitely won't help both teams, basketball and even the relationship between countries.

It's going to be an exhibition game, so don't expect the players to take it seriously (specially the PBA ones who have a tendency of folding to foreign All Stars much like they did versus the visiting NBA Stars a year ago and the Hall of Famers the year before which was spanked by other Asian countries).

Still, there are rumors that the team might be reinforced by 3 National players. They already have the Chinese Taipei great Tseng Wen-Ting (the long haired, highly skilled player that gave Asi Taulava fits before Marcus Douthit came to town) so at least we'll have some great basketball played underneath.

This could also be a great opportunity for the CBA to open its doors to Filipino players. They already have some Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean and most notably, Americans (Stephon Marbury of the champion Beijing Ducks) so why not recruit a crack Filipino PG or two? We're just as skilled as the Americans with the basketball dribbling-wise, and pretty sure guys like Alex Cabagnot and Jayson Castro are unmatched by any Chinese PG.

Honestly, all we're really interested in seeing is Yao Ming. If he will push through with plans of joining his team over to Manila. We don't care if he doesn't play, just his mere 7"5 presence would be enough to see. Plus, we're pretty sure that his soft touch is still there. The knees and feet- no, but shooters will always have their follow throughs no matter the age.

Oh, and if Talk 'n' Text pulls out their players from this one, then yes, we call boycott.