Chip Engelland: PBA Superstar

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As the old adage says, never judge a book by its cover because you never know what is underneath. via: Interaksyon.com  

Looking at San Antonio Spurs' Chip Engelland one would think he would be a great basketball Xs and Os specialist on Coach Gregg Popovich’s staff.

In actuality, a look in to Engelland’s past reveals that he has been around some of the greatest basketball minds in since 1970.  He was a ballboy for John Wooden’s 1975 UCLA men’s basketball team. He played at Duke from 1980 to 1983, to go along with his stints on the staffs of George Karl and the Spurs' Gregg Popovich.

As Matt Bonner found out during his trip to the Philippines for the NBA Fit program, Engelland has reached a superstar status in the country.

Via Interaksyon.com:

“It was a special moment for me back there,” Engelland told InterAKTV in an exclusive online interview.

“I feel that the Philippine fans are the best basketball fans in the world,” he said.

After Duke, Chip “The Machine Gun” Engelland played in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) during this time that he became a naturalized Filipino citizen, via a presidential decree from Ferdinand Marcos. In the PBA he played for the San Miguel Beerman, where he led the team to the 1985 Jones Cup Championship.  The Jones Cup is an annual tournament played in Taipei, Taiwan since 1977. 

This championship was one of the few victories the Philippines nation can claim against international competition since the FIBA World Cup in Bronze medal in 1954 and the FIBA Asian Championship in 1960.

By giving a passionate basketball nation some national pride after walking in the basketball wilderness for twenty five years, he was elevated to superstar status.

So Spurs’ fans, do you see Engelland ever leaving the Spurs and taking a head coaching spot elsewhere like Mike Budenholzer and Brett Brown?