Meneses, Cariaso facing new challenges

by Agnes R. Cruz

Cariaso

MANILA: Two players with virtually identical style of playing the game closest to their hearts are facing contrasting challenges in their careers - and they are doing good.

Vergel Meneses and Jeffrey Cariaso, both notorious for their devil-may-care moves on the hoops, are embarking on their respective missions in the Philippine basketball landscape.

The 11-year veteran Meneses, who won the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award in 1995, is once again passing through a crossroad in his glorious career as a professional basketball player.

He had just been reunited with former RFM coach Derrick Pumaren after Ginebra traded him to expansion team FedEx last month.

Actually, it was a development the pride of Bulacan had closely followed for the past two months knowing that it was inevitable.

“I told Coach Allan (Caidic) last year that if ever management was planning to trade me, I just hope it would be to FedEx because I already know and am pretty familiar with Coach Derrick’s system. That’s why, despite leaving Ginebra with a heart, I'm so thankful to be with this new team,” said the nine-time All-Star.

Moving in to a neophyte ballclub means more than that to Meneses. The 33-year-old dynamo hopes to spend the last remaining years of his career with FedEx, calling it as his “final home.”

Meneses has catapulted himself to prominence immediately after breaking into the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) in 1992, landing at the doorstep of Presto Ice Cream.

His sensational slam-dunking, sweet-gliding talent has earned him the monicker “Aerial Voyager.”

For a while, he spent time polishing his game with Sta. Lucia Realty, the team that bought the Gokongwei franchise the following year, before joining RFM where he won three championships, one with Yeng Guiao and two with Pumaren.

In 1999, he was signed up by Ginebra for a five-year deal to form a formidable partnership later with Sta Lucia’s former franchise player, Zandro Limpot.

Meneses

But a cocktail of injuries and a seeming incompatibility with Ginebra’s system, left Meneses out in cold under Caidic’s tutelage. So late last year saw him and Caidic holding a heart-to-heart talk about each other's future.

“I simply couldn’t fit to Ginebra’s system, that’s why I had no other recourse but to ask politely Coach Caidic to trade me,” recalled Meneses.

In exchange for a future draft pick, Ginebra freed itself of a big-budget star in Meneses, who is reportedly earning 500,000 pesos a month, while gifting FedEx with a multi-titled veteran with positive flair and savvy, not to mention a high marquee value.

Meneses is teaming up once more with former Swift teammate Zaldy Realubit and fellow-All-Star Jerry Codiñera.

Indeed, things are looking rosy for him. His knees are fine and his groin pull, which kept him out for most of the season, no longer bothers him.

Still, he is not taking any chances.

“I took my old number during my amateur days (No. 8) because I felt No. 2 (his jersey number with Ginebra) had brought to me bad luck,” quipped Meneses, who relinquished his old No. 18 to Wilmer Ong at Ginebra and to 2002 top draft pick Yancy de Ocampo at FedEx.

Certainly, he is determined to have his last voyage with FedEx.

“I will keep myself fit so I could blend perfectly with FedEx’s system,” he said. ìIím so thankful that Coach Derrick has put his confidence in me again, and that’s already a big achievement on my part.”

Cariaso, who was the Rookie of the Year winner in the same year Meneses won his MVP trophy, is part of the National Team competing in the Asian Games in Busan, South Korea.

“This has become a personal mission for me,” said Cariaso, who barely missed the chance to be part of the last two national teams in the Asian Games. “But it's not entirely about me simply making the team. I want to be in that team, I want to do well for the sake of the team and I want the team to do well for the sake of the country.”

In 1994, he was a promising 21-year-old talent straight out of the US college leagues who caught the eye of Norman Black and was made to try out for the Philippine team to the Hiroshima Asiad - one of only five amateurs asked to do so. He ended up as one of its final cuts and, sadly, the Nationals failed to win a medal.

Four years later, Cariaso passed through the rigorous screening process and made it all the way to the Athletes’ Village in Bangkok, only to end up as the Unlucky 13th in Tim Cone’s Centennial Team, which settled for a third-place finish.

“I really cried in Bangkok,” he narrated, “because I wanted it so much and then that sad thing happened, and to be honest I was not expecting it.”

But Cariaso, a vital cog in Alaska’s dream title run inthe 90s that made it as one of the winningest teams in the history of the pro league, somehow has managed to put a positive spin to all these close calls.

“It has always been my perception in life that everything happens for a reason. And if I finally make this year’s national team, it will happen for a reason,” he said.

Indeed, that resolve and positive approach has reflected on his performance this season.

From the time the candidates’ pool was formed in January to their stint in the Commissioner's Cup, he and Fil-Tongan Asi Taulava have become one of the brightest spots in coach Jong Uichico’s team.

Cariaso, who is admittedly the best mid-sized defender in the national team, is sharing minutes with the likes of fellow forwards Danny Seigle, Noy Castillo, Dondon Hontiveros and Kenneth Duremdes.

Yet, lately, Cariaso has been surprisingly getting the biggest chunk of the minutes among them owing to his all-around brilliance spiked by a more consistent perimeter jumper that simply couldn't escape the coaching staff's discerning eyes.

Of course, at 29, he may be at the zenith of his career.

“I’ve matured a lot and I guess I’m at a point where I’m no longer too young and at the same time not yet among the old ones,” he said. *

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