The Nokia NBTC D-League couldn’t have culminated any better with teams from Manila and Cebu lording it over the competition after five months.

Winning the provincial crown was B-MEG Expert Cebu while Smart-Manila annexed the National Capital Region crown in contrasting fashions with B-MEG winning by nine points (75-66) and Smart-Manila utilizing its immense firepower in whipping Xavier School-San Juan, 92-53.

With these victories this corner also says kudos to the winners of individual awards, namely James Regalado of Cebu who was named Most Outstanding Player and Rhonnel Lastimosa, who was named Burlington Most Promising Player.

Also making it to the mythical five in the provincial side Lomell Loyola and Tristan Perez of Smart-Olongapo, B-MEG Cebu’s Edcor Marata and Kiervin Revadavia of Trace College-Laguna.

In the NCR division, Baser Amer of Smart Manila was named Most Outstanding Player while the Burlington Most Promising Player and the Sportsmanship Award went to Timothy Dumas of Magnolia Paranaque and Bryan Tan of San Juan, respectively.

Comprising the mythical team are Xavier School’s Jeron Teng, B-MEG Integra Manila’s Mark Cruz, Tolomia, Mark Ollano of Magnolia Paranaque and Smart Manila’s Alfonzo Gotladera.

Although this corner may praise the said teams for keeping up with the spirit of the Nokia NBTC D-League, which is to produce leaders and not merely basketball players. This could also be said of the rest of the field, even those teams which did not make it as far the regional finals.

As this writer reiterates over and over again, the focus may be the winners but this does not veer away from the purpose of the Nokia NBTC D-League existence and mode of training.

For sure, with the varsity basketball season coming up, these same players and coaches from the different city and provincial teams will be doing their other teams a favor by passing on the basketball knowledge earned during the five-month training.

The core activity of the Nokia NBTC D-League is the unified training for all teams. These focus on fundamentals which will benefit both the team and the individual capacities of the players themselves.

The coaches, too, will be able to pass on the knowledge they learned from the seminars and the actual implementation of the coaching methods during actual games.

It may be too early to gauge the results of the program that was done with the blessings of the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas, but most the likely the results will spring up positively in the coming years.

For making this league’s season a success, we thank sponsors like Nokia Philippines, TAO Corporation, San Miguel Pure Foods Company, Smart Communications and Burlington. We pray that more private sector sponsors would come forward to make Philippine basketball a rousing success anew.