JAWO @ 78

Last March 8, basketball icon and tagged as the “Living Legend,” Robert Vincent Salazar Jaworski Sr., popularly known during the height of his playing career as the “Big J, Sonny and Jawo” celebrated life at 78, as legion of followers and admirers sent their respective greetings to his family and words of encouragement to the man, who had contributed a lifetime legacy to the sport.

Though the Jaworski household have been tight-lip on the current condition of the grand patriarch , out of the limelight and from the public-eye since his retirement from politics, served as one term Senator of the Republic from 1998 to 2004 as reports and speculations spread regarding the real health status of PBA’s most popular player.

One report that came out, the Big J is experiencing a rare physical illnesses that would take a long period of rehabilitation and left every basketball fans, friends, former co-leagues and even critics wishing him and prayers for his divine recovery.

As a fitting tribute to the man, who had made basketball, not only the national pastime, but a passion to every basketball-loving Filipinos, let me delve briefly into the life and career of one the PBA’s 40 Greatest Player of All Time in recollecting his lifetime legacy that spanned almost three decades.

The Big J started his basketball career in the collegiate ranks while playing for the University of the East Warriors where he played from 1962 to 1968. And at early at 18, did you know that?…He was the youngest member of the Philippine team that represented the country during the 1968 Mexico Olympics.

Since then, his career flourished when he joined Manila Industrial Commercial Athletics Association (MICAA) playing for YCO Painters before joining Meralco in later part of 1968. After a couple of seasons with Meralco, Jaworski and another basketball great Big Boy Reynoso were slapped a lifetime ban by league officials as Jaworski and Reynoso chased and punched referees.

But thanks to the intervention of then Presidential son Ferdinand “Bong Bong” Marcos Jr. who requested the MICAA board to lift the lifetime banned after serving two years. Jaworski’s absence somehow dealt a big losses to MICAA, as it faved the birth of PBA in 1975, where he made the league to what it is now.

In his 23- year career in Asia’s first professional league, he earned13 championships in leading Toyota, and Ginebra San Miguel, which eventually became the most loved and popular team in the PBA history.

Aside from the multi- championships, Jaworski lead with an all-professional Philippine representative to 1990 Beijing Asian Games as men's basketball head coach wherein the country capped the silver medal behind host China.

With Jaworski’s long line of achievements and the lifetime legacy to basketball in the country, he truly deserve a lifetime tribute likewise as he continues to influence younger generation of players with his patented game spirit of “Never Say Die”.

Trivia: Did you know that Jaworski, because his popularity, barreled showbiz? He appeared in a a starring role in three movies?… “Fastbreak”, co-starring Freddie Webb, “Pamilya de Magiba” and in a James Bond-inspired the “ Big J".