LOOKING at and hearing him talk about basketball, the history side of it, not the technical side, at the first HOOPCON PH last Sunday, one would not think the guy is a full-time doctor of medicine.

He is actually, a radiologist, that is his employment, but his passion is collecting sports hard-to-find memorabilia in basketball, including old sports magazines.

I should know because he bought a lot of my old copies of Sports Weekly, Sports Zone, Sports Life, Sports Mirror, and Weekly Sports Digest where I used to write for a long, long time.

And what is more impressive, Dr. Rico Mesina was the organizer of the event held at the Hobby Stadium in Quezon City, very much hands-on at that, together with other collectors like my friend Aris Garcia who inarguably owns the biggest collection of sports magazines in the country. Again, I should know, he also bought from me in the past. I have also seen personally his collection in his office recently.

You can ask the guests at the opening ceremony of the one-day event, Vice Mayor Dodot Jaworski, PBA Commissioner Willie Marcial, PBA superstar Vergel Meneses and the very first PBA Rookie of the Year Gil Cortez, and veteran and highly respected coach Joe Lipa , they were all amazed at the display of memorabilia at the venue.

Maybe the best description of the event came from Joe who said Doc Rico was able to connect the past of basketball to the present, and later on with the future.

Joe also brought copies of his book Basketball 101 , even autographing sold copies, including a complimentary copy for me.

He also stayed for a very lively Q&A session that I moderated but I will share his interesting answers to interesting questions in a separate piece on him.

We agreed to meet over lunch one of these days. For one, we are practically neighbors, he lives solo in Azure across SM Bicutan, we live on the other side of SLEX, near the mall.

Dodot was so impressed with the exhibit that he invited the organizers to hold a similar one in Pasig, and Doc Rico is already working on HOOPCON 2, and I will again be helping out.

I also asked Dodot about the condition of his dad, Sonny. He said no changes, still “mahina” most of the time but not bed ridden, and still has not lost his sense of humor. He had to leave early to visit his dad for lunch, that day being Father’s Day.

On his part, Willie made an invitation to the group to be part of the 50th anniversary of the PBA in 2025, he was surprised at some of the exhibits he saw dating back to pre-war days.

Gil also had his own invitation to the group, he is involved in a big Crispa-Toyota grand reunion by December this year in coordination with the PBA.

He invited Doc Rico and his group to be part of it, maybe a display of Crispa and Toyota souvenir items.

He also reminisced about the times he used to throw Dodot into the pool at the Toyota quarters in Makati, a very young and small Dodot of course.

Vergel , who was introduced by Willie as somebody who is so good at eluding his guards during his heydays, agreed to that observation but shared that every time he drives to the basket, he gets a lot of unfriendly nudges and hidden blows, the PBA being a physical league then.

On the side, he feels that the PBA should start matching the salaries being offered to Filipino players by Japanese and Korean leagues to stem the outflow of talented players.

The question is, will the PBA clubs ve anenable to that?

Actually, Joe pointed to economics as the major reason why players nowadays have become more focused on the financial side of their careers, something Joe does not agree to.

The event also featured a battle of the brains among serious basketball followers, trivia about the PBA, even the MBA , and basketball as a whole.

Again you need to be impressed by how well Doc Rico knows the sport.

Even with my immersion in basketball for a long time, I would not beat any of the participants in terms of knowledge.

Next week, am looking forward to my favorite sport now, women’s volleyball as the PVL opens its invitational conference with a lot of new collegiate players moving up to the pros, plus two new team joining the league.

Now did I hear right that Ateneo’s Faith Nisperos received a cool million bucks as signing bonus with Akari, on top of a P500k monthly salary?

And that Eya Laure got a brand new car plus a 200K salary with Chery Tiggo?

Now Ricky Palou is talking of putting in a drafting system for the league, looks like the sport is really following in the footsteps of the PBA. By Lito Cinco

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