There is a line in the sand when it comes to basketball discourse, and then there is whatever the hell Mac Cardona was recently doing in the floodwaters of Quezon City.
If you missed it, the former PBA Finals MVP went viral for posting a video of himself wading through the flooded streets of Gregorio Araneta Avenue. The visual alone was bizarre, but the caption is what set the Philippine basketball internet on fire: "Coach Tab dapat dito kayo mag aqua training. Hahaha joke lang coach tab for content only hahahaha".
Let's unpack this, because the layers of backlash, grief, and sheer irony here are thicker than the floodwaters Cardona was swimming in.
The Foundation of the Outrage
The immediate blowback was swift and severe, and frankly, it is completely understandable.
Sports media personality Ceej Tantengco-Malolos summed up the collective frustration, calling Cardona's antics a "new low". She pointed out that while nobody expects model behavior from Cardona at this stage of his public life, making light of a literal tragedy is beyond the pale.
When you make a punchline out of "aqua training," you are inherently simplifying a horrifying event that ended two young lives. More importantly, you are reopening an unimaginable wound for the families of the victims. For the parents and teammates still grieving Baterbonia and Adili, scrolling through Facebook and seeing a former pro laughing about water training is a gut punch. From that perspective, yes—Cardona absolutely crossed the line of basic human decency.
The Grand, Uncomfortable Irony
But here is where the conversation takes a sharp, uncomfortable turn. Did Cardona cross the line to mock the victims? No. He aimed his hook shot directly at former Ateneo head coach Tab Baldwin.
And that is where the irony of this entire saga reaches maximum capacity.
Look at the current legal and public narrative surrounding the Dipaculao tragedy. Coach Tab Baldwin is the one who initiated the team-building activity. He is the one who has publicly taken responsibility for failing to protect the players, and he is currently viewed in many circles as the primary culprit—the main suspect facing the institutional and legal fallout of the incident.
Cardona’s joke was a direct, albeit wildly insensitive, jab at Baldwin’s disastrous decision-making.
Because of the massive backlash, Cardona actually issued an apology, writing: "I'm so sorry, Coach Tab! Dapat hindi ako nagbibiro ng ganun".
Read that again. He apologized to Tab Baldwin.
This creates a fascinating, almost paradoxical situation for the critics. By calling out Cardona and demanding that he delete the post and show some respect, the public is inadvertently demanding respect for Tab Baldwin. The very people furious about the tragedy are essentially defending the main suspect of that same tragedy from being cyberbullied by Mac Cardona.
The Final Read
Did Cardona cross the line? Absolutely. You simply do not use a fatal accident as fodder for Facebook engagement.
But in doing so, he accidentally exposed the messy, contradictory nature of how we process sports tragedies in real time. We want to protect the memory of the victims, but in this specific instance, enforcing that boundary meant policing a joke made at the expense of the man deemed responsible for the tragedy in the first place. It is a weird, dark corner of PBA internet culture, and it’s one we’d probably all be better off leaving behind.
Related Article: UAAP Controversy: Ateneo will DEDICATE this SEASON for Baterbonia and Adili?
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