Lito Alvarez: Hari ng Padala

With Alvarez back on board, no one's safe.
The guy managed to trade all the household names
in this picture for nothing.

Just for the sake of parity and respect, this writer won't even bother with returning Air21 Express team governor Lito Alvarez' non-basketball (read: political) interests and ventures. Let's just stick to how we fans know him: someone who'd trade his own mother if it meant making more money and getting future picks (which in turn will end up being traded, again, for money) all at the cost of his team being remotely decent.

Under his watch, the franchise traded away top draftees such as Yancy de Ocampo (1st overall, 2002), Ren-Ren Ritualo (8th, 2002), Marc Pingris (3rd, 2004), Ranidel de Ocampo (4th, 2004), Jay Washington (1st, 2005), Mac Cardona (5th, 2005), KG Canaleta (6th, 2005), Arwind Santos (2nd, 2006), JC Intal (4th, 2007), Doug Kramer (5th, 2007), Yousif Aljamal (8th, 2007), Mark Borboran (6th, 2008), and Japeth Aguilar (1st, 2009).

Stars such as Gary David, Ronald Tubid, and Alex Cabagnot also found themselves being traded away by Air 21 after stints with the team.

The copy above was lifted from Rey Joble's solid article on Mr. Alvarez posted on InterAKTV (click here to visit the official InterAKTV website). Daresay that some of the guys mentioned were raw at the time and only developed in the last few years such as Doug Kramer, Marc Pingris and KG Canaleta, but it's hard to argue for Mr. Alvarez when he opted to send Arwind Santos-- an MVP runner-up in his first two-three years, the De Ocampo brothers and even a young yet established scorer Mac Cardona elsewhere for little to nothing in return.

While fans have no say in how the Lina franchise should go about their business decisions, the re-hiring of Mr. Alvarez leaves a bad taste in everyone's mouths. True to form, the first thing he does on board is initiate a trade with his preferred clientele. There are talks/ rumors about Jimbo Aquino coming over from sister team Barako Bull Energy, don't be surprised if they act as a conduit for even bigger trades that would make their team even more irrelevant.

This may be a bit of a stretch, but you could credit this season's success to the fans and the league being spared from Mr. Alvarez' penchant for averaging two to three trades a conference.

Fortunately, there's not a single name on the Express' current roster that teams would go agog over. Just a bunch of young legs and reasonable contracts that can be tossed in trades by virtue of them being conduits.