Portland Trail Blazers Robin Lopez and Wesley Matthews, along with Avery Johnson, are in the Philippines to help with relief efforts stemming from the devastation brought upon this country by Typhoon Yolanda. According to NBA.com, the trio are set to pair with World Vision Philippines to help construct temporary shelters and to perform basketball clinics for the children who are reportedly NBA fanatics. To date the NBA Family has donated $2.2 million toward support of Typhoon Yolanda relief efforts.
Josaias T. dela Cruz, the executive director of the World Vision Development Foundation had this to say to NBA.com about the assistance the NBA has provided since the devastating typhoon:
"“We are happy to host the upcoming visit of Robin Lopez, Wesley Matthews, and Avery Johnson to Tacloban, and our community partners, especially the basketball-loving children, will be delighted the meet with the NBA players in what we trust will be a fun and meaningful exchange for both the NBA visitors and the local community.”"
Lopez and Matthews have been putting fun pictures up on Instagram throughout their trip as well. Here are a couple of those.
If you’re curious, Rhian Ramos is a famous actress, model and singer in the Philippines.
Clearly, success travels fast as Wes took this picture at the NBA Cafe in Manila on Wednesday.
It’s always great to see athletes taking their time to give back to communities, either here in America or overseas in a country like the Philippines who has been putting the pieces back together since the typhoon rocked their small country. Lopez, Johnson and Matthews are now (as I write this article) in Cebu for the NBA Cares event as shown by this late night tweet by the NBA Philippines account on Twitter…
NBA guests .@CoachAvery, @wessywes2 and @rolopez42 now in Cebu for the NBA Cares event. #NBAinPH pic.twitter.com/86vgv7LYtc
— NBA Philippines (@NBA_Philippines) September 12, 2014
Lopez also made his own headlines Thursday when he told The Philippine Star that he would welcome the chance to play for Gilas Pilipinas in the future.
"“If the Andray Blatche thing doesn’t work out, tell the Gilas people I’m here.” He continued later, “I don’t wish any harm to come to Dray or anything bad in the situation they are in now. Obviously he has played his heart out for that team and I think he is a great fit for Gilas.”"
Pretty safe to say that Lopez probably won’t be asked to play for Team USA anytime soon — although one could argue that if Mason Plumlee can make it then anyone can — so not really a groundbreaking quote there, but it would be interesting to see that team with a legitimate post threat. Gilas went 1-4 in the FIBA World Cup in Spain that is still ongoing.
Lopez is such a fun-loving guy and the NBA couldn’t have picked a better group to head over and help the Philippines try to rebuild what they once had before this catastrophic storm hit. Matthews had the most appropriate quote, telling Yahoo Sports, that he hopes they can serve “as a distraction” to those suffering, and make them forget the hardship they are under.
Sometimes basketball can make a much larger impact than simply entertaining us for a couple of hours — this is one of those times.