NBA finals fever is so high that one of the Belize City radio stations is using the ABC television audio feed and broadcasting it along with input from two or three local commentators. The idea was interesting. If you had to be in a vehicle, then it was one way to keep up with the score.
I remembered that at the time of the first Belize semi-pro basketball finals in July of 1992, the product was so good that Mexicans were coming across the border to the games. Usually, you know, the movement is pretty much one way – Belizeans to Chetumal and Merida for Mexican restaurants, hotels, medicine, and their overall atmosphere of discipline and order. Today indeed, the Corozal free zone and casinos bring Mexicans over this side, but in 1992 there was no free zone or casino. Basketball in Belize had excited our northern neighbors.
In fact, basketball in Belize had excited our western neighbors even. I don’t remember how the connections were made, but in 1994 the Raiders hosted a Guatemalan team in Belize City. Then the Raiders flew to Guatemala City to a quadrangular tournament, which included Costa Rica and Salvador, if I remember correctly. (I was not on the trip.)
Kremandala became involved in semi-pro basketball because of a combination of circumstances. One was that a fight in football had caused that sport to go semi-pro in 1991. It then seemed completely logical for b-ball to follow. Another factor was the fact that the core members of the Raiders had all been working at Amandala folding newspapers from the time they were children. So they had trust in the Partridge Street management. Most of our starting five were “home grown.” And then, Kremandala had a young radio station which was struggling to survive. KREM Radio had a lot of air time available to promote the Raider games.
It is possible, however, that the same KREM Radio which contributed to making the Kremandala Raiders a 1992 phenomenon, became the team’s (and the league’s) Achilles heel. What hurt the Raiders, all of Belize can see in retrospect, also hurt the league, because the Raiders were the predominant gate attraction. The viciousness of the radio competition, which was BCB vs KREM in 1992, but then included LOVE from 1993 onwards, undermined semi-pro basketball, because KREM’s radio competitors believed that what benefited the Raiders, also benefited KREM, and vice versa – what hurt the Raiders, hurt KREM. So, KREM’s radio competitors were openly hostile to the Raiders, to be joined by the UDP government newspaper in 1994.
We are talking about many years ago, and I am not trying to begin old arguments. What I am seeking to do is have us look back at how a Belizean industry/product which had reached regional quality, fifteen years ago, now no longer even exists.
The radio war was bad for Belizean basketball, but the supposed refurbishment of the Civic after the 1992 season, was worse. That catastrophe is still haunting basketball.
Because Kremandala and the UDP leadership were hostile to each other, when the UDP came to power in June of 1993, they began to use their power to undermine the Raiders and semi-pro basketball. I understand that, and accept it.
In 1998, however, with the UDP desperately unpopular, they decided to use the same basketball they had so badly damaged, to retrieve their popularity. So the UDP spent a lot of money on the Belize team in the CARICOM tournament, hosted by Belize, in the earlier part of 1998. The Belize team, featuring Milton Palacio and other Belizean Americans, and led by an expensive American coach – David Greenwood, did well, and won the tournament. The big victory excited the people of Belize, but it was not enough to save the Esquivel government in August general elections that year.
What the CARICOM tournament did on the negative side, however, was throw the basketball salary scale here out of whack. So that, even though the Cordel Hyde Ministry of Sports resurrected semi-pro in 1999, the franchises had to spend too much money on Belizean Americans and foreigners in order to be competitive. Between 1992 and 1996, we had limited the amount of players from abroad. Yes, the post-1998 product was definitely superior in quality to the 1992-1996 product, but the post-1998 salary scales were unsustainable.
All Belizean basketball needs today is a good facility. Our people love the game, and our youth are talented. It is sad to think of what might have been. But it is sadder still to watch all our attention focused on Los Angeles and Orlando when we could have had our own good thing going on in The Jewel. For real.