BROTHER acts in major commercial leagues in Philippine basketball history are special but no longer a rarity. It’s the father-and-son combinations in local ball that are rare.
That’s because some sons were not as good as their elders in their craft and thereby did not make it to the top grades (after their academic years). Or it could also be that they simply did not follow in the footsteps of their fathers in taking up basketball-playing as a profession.
Of course, there were a number of athletes that were better roundballers than their dads at their prime. The latest father-and-son combination to have played in the same commercial or professional circuit at different times is the duo of Alvin Teng and Jeric Allen Teng.
Alvin The Robocop, who turned 49 last March 4, played 14 seasons in the professional Philippine Basketball Association with San Miguel Beer, Pepsi, Mobiline and Alaska from 1986 to 2002 with 652-game averages of 8.8 points and 6.0 rebounds.
With the San Miguel Beermen, the 6-foot-3.5 center-forward from Davao City was voted the PBA’s Most Improved Player in 1988, earned a berth on the all-PBA Second Team selection in 1989, 1991, 1992 and 1993 and made it to the league’s All-Defensive Team for six consecutive years from 1989 to 1994.
Alvin was the PBA Press Corps’s first Defensive Player of the Year awardee in 1993. Under head coach Norman Black, he earned nine championship rings with the Beermen, including the rare three-conference Grand Slam title feat in 1989.
While Alvin was defense-minded, eldest son Jeric is more offense-oriented. Jeric is currently a PBA frosh with the Rain or Shine Elasto Painters, who lost to the San Mig Super Coffee Mixers, 4-2, in this year’s Philippine (All-Filipino) Cup.
Jeric, who turns 23 on March 18, won a pair of titles (2008 and 2009) in the Metro Manila Tiong Lian Basketball Association as a high-schooler with Xavier School. The 6-foot-2 guard played five years with the University of Santo Tomas in the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP), earning league Rookie of the Year honors in 2009 and helping guide the Growling Tigers to the UAAP finals in 2012 and 2013 (with losses to Ateneo de Manila University and De La Salle University, respectively).
On the horizon is potentially another Teng in the pro league. But that can wait. Jeron Alvin, the younger of Alvin’s two basketball-playing sons, has just completed his sophomore season with De La Salle University and romped away with a pair of championships in 2013 – a UAAP crown by the Green Archers for the first time since 2007 and the Philippine Collegiate Champions League (PCCL) title over Cebu’s Southwestern University.
The 6-foot-2 forward, who will mark his 20th birthday on March 21, secured the Finals Most Valuable Player hardware both times. (Note that Alvin and his two sons were all born in March.)
In addition to inheriting father Alvin’s brute physique, Jeron owns a strong inside game offensively. The UAAP’s Rookie of the Year winner in 2012, Jeron also had great success as a high school player with Xavier School.
He won three Tiong Lian titles with the Golden Stallions in 2009 (as a team of Jeric’s), 2010 and 2011 and was the league’s MVP three years in a row from 2010 to 2012 when he topped the Chinese-Filipino circuit in scoring with outlandish season averages of 23.3, 39.5 and 30.9 ppg every time out.
To the uninitiated, Jeron scored 104 points for Xavier School in a MMTLBA games against Grace Christian College in January 2011 as a HS junior. His time in the PBA is only just a few years away.