Former Otago Nuggets and Tall Blacks coach Tab Baldwin is at the centre of an investigation into the deaths of two basketball players in the Philippines.<\/p>\n
Ateneo de Manila University, the school Baldwin coaches at, said in a statement two members of its men’s basketball team died in a drowning incident during a team-building exercise in a northeastern coastal province on Monday.<\/p>\n
The players were Rene Clert Baterbonia and Divine Adili.<\/p>\n
Philippine law enforcement launched an investigation into the deaths yesterday, in a case that has drawn widespread attention in a country where the sport is hugely popular.<\/p>\n
While Baldwin has maintained silence since the incident, and it has been reported the university has barred him from speaking, local media showed him at a candlelight vigil for the two victims.<\/p>\n
Baldwin, who coached the Nuggets in their inaugural season in the NBL in 1990, has led Ateneo to four titles in the Philippines’ prestigious university basketball league.<\/p>\n
He built a decorated international career, including guiding the Tall Blacks to a fourth-place finish at the 2002 FIBA World Cup, alongside coaching the team to the Athens Olympics and 2006 World Cup.<\/p>\n
Having also coached the national teams of Lebanon and Jordan, Baldwin began coaching in the Philippines in 2013, and has been at Ateneo de Manila since 2016.<\/p>\n
The National Bureau of Investigation, on orders from the justice ministry, created a task force to investigate “all angles” including whether safety protocols were followed, and that there was no foul play as initial police findings showed.<\/p>\n
“An event may be ‘accidental’ in the sense that no-one wished it and yet remains the product of a failure to exercise the care the law demands,” the NBI said.<\/p>\n
The distraught mother of Baterbonia questioned in an interview with local television what had taken place after learning of her son’s death.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know why that happened,” she said.<\/p>\n
Baldwin has not issued any public statement since the incident and could not immediately be reached for comment.<\/p>\n
The Labour Department said it would subpoena Baldwin to check he holds a valid employment permit.<\/p>\n
Ateneo could not immediately be reached for comment but the university said in a statement on Thursday it was conducting its own investigation and that Baldwin and the basketball team’s manager had taken leave while it looked into the incident.<\/p>\n
The case has also caught the attention of lawmakers who said they will launch a congressional inquiry.<\/p>\n
– Additional reporting by Allied Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Otago Nuggets and Tall Blacks coach Tab Baldwin is at the centre of an investigation into the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-473020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}