I am delighted that you — our country’s beloved warriors of the hard court who usually fiercely battle with one another as members of opposing sides — have mutually agreed to be drafted to and fight for a single team, the Association of Philippine Professional Basketball Players, or APPBP.

Your new association provides you with the very rewarding opportunity to employ your renowned talents to worthy causes — that of uplifting the sport of professional basketball and basketball in general, which we all love so dearly, of fostering deeper sportsmanship and better relations among those involved in the sport, and of helping improve the lives of professional basketball players, especially those among you who are inactive or less fortunate.

In the service of these causes, you have laid aside the rivalries and some animosities that result from your brand of hard play and joined together in selfless cooperation. You are sending home the message that raising the sport to a higher level and furthering the welfare of all are your top priorities.

I congratulate you for embarking on this novel and noble undertaking, and wish you great success.

If I may say so, what you do demonstrate people empowerment in action, which as you know, my administration keenly advocates as a powerful tool to overcome our problems and challenges and to realize our dreams.

People empowerment means taking control of our lives, assuming a dynamic role in development — and not just remain a passive spectator in our Asia-Pacific region. We make people empowerment possible through unity and cooperation, by organizing ourselves to achieve common objectives.

In setting up the APPBP, individual members have risen way above their highest jump — by keeping alive the exemplary Filipino values of pagkakaisa and pagbuklod sa kapwa.

I understand that this early, the APPBP will embark, in cooperation with the Philippine National Red Cross, on a nationwide blood donation campaign. I heartily approve of this life-giving campaign. I myself have been giving blood voluntarily since 1954, and since then I have become a member of the unique Red Cross blood galloner family. We all know that there is a perennial blood shortage problem for our needy countrymen.

I have also been informed that you will soon launch a second project which will, fittingly, capitalize on your prowess in the hard court — that of providing scientific training in basketball to the youth of the countryside. I applaud this project, and I am sure our young basketball fans eagerly await you. What a thrill it must be for them not only to see their heroes in the flesh but also to be given tips and guided by the country’s basketball greats.

I commend you also for your support to the Bigay Pagmamahal Foundation, whom the association has chosen as a beneficiary because of its exemplary devotion to the welfare of underprivileged children through its educational scholarship program.

The APPBP is off to an auspicious start with these projects. I am certain that your example will spur other civic organizations to be more involved in community endeavors particularly, i hope, in poverty-alleviation projects.

We all want to develop and modernize the countryside, and that starts with our young people in our towns and barangays. While we in government are doing our best, we realize that without private support and initiative, all our efforts will be incomplete and lacking success.

You yourself are in a unique position to help move our country forward. You are our youths’ heroes, and what you do profoundly affects them. You can immensely help lead them away from dangerous drugs, away from harmful habits and criminal tendencies, and towards god-fearing, socially productive lives.

You can be the missionaries of disciplined training, competitiveness and hard work — qualities that you can easily prove can do wonders not only in the hard court but also in real life.

Let the lessons derived from rigorous tournaments as those in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) serve as our guiding light.

From their inception 20 years ago to the present, the PBA games have shown that the most cohesive, the best disciplined team which has sacrificed the most and persistently worked hard always wins the championship.

Let us therefore promote on a nationwide scale this culture of teamwork and competitiveness that our champion athletes live by. The only way to achieve our vision to develop world class champions whether in sports or in our export products is through the culture of teamwork, discipline, industry and sacrifice.

As it is for sports development, this is also the prescription we need to overcome poverty and backwardness and march faster towards “Philippines 2000!!!”, which is our shared vision of a progressive and stable nation.

In closing, let me offer my sincere wishes for your association, under the leadership of your chairman Sonny Jaworski and your president Franz Pumaren, to grow stronger and my hope that you will never waver in your commitment to improve professional basketball and the welfare of its players and to continue to help our countrymen.

Mabuhay ang APPBP!

Thank you and good day.