Indoor courts are central to life in tens of thousands of towns and cities across the basketball-mad Philippines, hosting everything from funerals and beauty pageants to “circumcision season.”
These “covered courts” are essential in remote or poor communities, where they are often one of just a few public buildings, so when people flee violent storms, they seek refuge on the courts.
“It doesn’t get empty, it’s overused,” said Roel de Guzman, who is in charge of the courts in one part of Manila. “It’s not just for basketball.”
In one recent week, one of his courts hosted a government seminar, a class for would-be motorcycle taxi drivers, an amateur boxing match promoted by boxer-turned-Philippine Senator Manny Pacquiao and, of course, some basketball.
The fact that daily life is deeply entwined with the courts is no surprise, given basketball’s immense popularity in the Philippines.
It is a love affair that goes back to the 1900s, when basketball was introduced by the US.
The sport flourished to the extent that the Philippines became the first Asian nation to found its own professional league.
For Rafe Bartholomew, a US journalist who wrote a book on Philippine hoops culture, the omnipresence of covered courts is proof of Filipinos’ love for the game.
“It is one of the most easily recognizable examples of just how ... saturated the country is with the sport of basketball and the role it plays in people’s lives,” he said.
According to government figures, there are 24,931 public covered courts scattered across the Philippines’ about 40,000 towns.
Building the courts is a simple and popular way for local politicians to provide services to their electorate. It also gives them a place to emblazon their names and build their political brand.
The courts play an especially large role in the lives of people in rural or poor areas, where nearly one-quarter of the population exists on less than US$2 per day.
One hospital in the nation’s capital has converted its covered court into a ward to treat cases of leptospirosis, a bacterial infection transmitted in animal urine.
The courts are also the scene of deeply rooted cultural events such as so-called “circumcision season,” when boys across the nation have their foreskins removed en masse as a right of passage to adulthood.
The improvised clinics at the gyms pop up yearly and contribute to the Philippines having one of the world’s highest rates of non-religious circumcision.
Bartholomew said he was once bumped off from his early morning basketball practice to give way to boys lining up to go under the knife.
However, the gyms also provide a gathering spot, whether just a covered space or one with bleachers and air-conditioning — effectively a type of town square in the nation of about 106 million people.
“If you look at Filipino plazas, it’s almost tantamount to saying it’s a basketball court,” urban planner Paulo Alcazaren said.
He added that public parks have been, to a large extent, replaced by covered courts as central gathering places, perhaps because the courts offer the promise of action.
“It’s a spectacle, it gathers people,” Alcazaren said.
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