Sen. Bong Go's Reaction to Gilas Pilipinas' Defeat in Asian Games

NAGOYA, Japan – The hurt was still fresh when Sen. Bong Go boarded his flight.

A self-confessed basketball diehard, Go admitted he nearly scrapped his trip to this busy Japanese city after Gilas Pilipinas absorbed a brutal beating at the hands of China on Monday in the 20th Asian Games Aichi-Nagoya 2026.

The numbers alone stung. Gilas, bringing what was essentially its “second team,” crashed to a 61-105 defeat in the preliminary round – a 44-point hammering that abruptly ended the country’s reign in Asia’s premier multi-sport showcase.

Go felt every bit of it.

“We were watching at the Senate and cheering for Gilas not to lose by 37 points,” he said during a dinner on Saturday, Sept. 19, hosted by Philippine Sports Commission Chairman Pato Gregorio.

They lost by even more.

“Like every Filipino fan, I was really disappointed. Imagine, losing by 44 points,” Go added, the disbelief still evident.

For a moment, the senator, one of the most visible public officials at major sports events, thought of staying home. The defeat was that deflating. The mood around Philippine basketball, that heavy.

But he came anyway.

Driven, he said, by a simple reason: to stand by Filipino athletes when they needed it most.

Go arrived in Nagoya on Wednesday, Sept. 16, and wasted no time getting back into supporter mode, showing up the next day to watch Alas Pilipinas Women take on Kazakhstan. If Gilas had just suffered a collapse, here was another national team still fighting, still carrying the flag on foreign soil.

The contrast was hard to ignore. One program reeling from a blowout loss, another battling on in the same continental stage. For Go, both deserved presence, not abandonment.

Once the Games wrap up, though, the mood will shift from emotional to forensic.

Go said there will be a full assessment of the Philippine campaign, with a sharp focus on the Gilas program and how a team representing a basketball-obsessed country could fall by 44 points to a regional rival.

“Need to know why this happened,” he said.

It was less a passing remark than a promise. The senator, who has embraced his role as one of the country’s loudest courtside cheerleaders, now finds himself echoing the question every Filipino fan is asking: how did it go this wrong, this fast, for Gilas Pilipinas?