Legendary Lim Eng Beng (Part 2)

BEFORE Lim Eng Beng there was elongated big man Kurt Bachmann who was the dominant player for De La Salle in the mid-fifties when he powered the Green to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) men’s basketball title in 1956. Legend has it that the 1960 Rome Olympian’s favorite offensive weapon, the hook shot, was “copied” by 7-foot-2 college phenom Lewis Alcindor from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in the U.S. NCAA tournament who would later take on the Muslim name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in his storied 20-year NBA career (1969-89) with the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers. After Eng Beng came topnotch players from different eras who earned the “King Archer” tag such as Zandro Limpot Jr., Mark Telan, Renren Ritualo, Joseph Yeo and Jeron Teng. But none of them came close to the dominance of the bull-shouldered Eng Beng in a Green-and-White uniform during their respective University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) stints. Lim undisputedly was the GOAT in La Salle cage history. The 5-foot-11 shooting guard won an NCAA championship with the Green Archers as a freshman in 1971. Another title ring came in 1974 in his final year of collegiate eligibility when he registered a pair of seniors scoring records that remains unchallenged to date. Lim chalked up an all-time tournament high 55 points against Colegio de San Juan de Letran. He also drilled in 54 markers against patsy Trinity College (now known as Trinity University of Asia) for consecutive 50-point feasts. That effectively shattered the old mark of 52 established by Knights guard Ricky Pineda in 1969. During the 1974 campaign, Lim averaged 30.9 points in 16 games – another NCAA record that still stands until now. That year, La Salle went 15-1 overall – its only loss, 72-71, coming at the hands of the Jose Rizal College Heavy Bombers on a game-winning bucket by Angelito Ladores. In the best-of-three finals, the Green Archers swept arch nemesis Ateneo de Manila, 2-0. In an interview more than three decades later, Eng Beng revealed that members of a gambling syndicate sought him to drop the first game of the championship series in exchange for P50,000 – a humongous amount at the time. Of course, he turned down the bribe offer. Lim’s No. 14 jersey was eventually retired by La Salle and he went on to play professionally in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA). Lim suited up with Carrier (under his La Salle coach Valentin “Tito” Eduque), Universal Textiles, San Miguel Beer, Crispa and Manila Beer in 416 games and 12 PBA seasons (1975-84/1986), scattering 5,879 career points along the way for a 14.1 average. Lim, whose career free throw percentage in the pro circuit was a nifty .792, subsequently was voted among the PBA’s 40 all-time greatest players and inducted into the PBA Hall of Fame. He was hired by his high school alma mater, Chiang Kai Shek College, as its head coach in 2005 and mentored a then-polished big man by the name of Justin Chua, who won a Metro Manila Tiong Lian Basketball Association (MMTLBA) title two years later (under another CKSC alum and PBA product Sunny Co) and eventually became a member of five UAAP championship teams with the Ateneo Blue Eagles from 2008-12. I bumped into Lim several times during the 2000s and as late as October 2009 when he was still playing hoops with his CKSC batch in an alumni league at the school’s tradition-steeped gym. In 2005 or 2006, I personally gifted him several newspaper clippings of his La Salle exploits and a 2004 book titled “Legends and Heroes of Philippine Basketball” where the Tondo-born star was among the players honored with a one-page story on his distinguished roundball career. Lim is already four years gone but cage fans continue to marvel over his immense contributions to Philippine basketball. More than that, Lim was a gentleman of the first order, on and off the hardwood.