The PBA has degenerated into a dishonest league that has lost its legitimacy. That’s according to Ronald Mascariñas, president of Bounty Agro Ventures, Inc., and patron of the now-defunct Chooks to Go Pilipinas 3×3 league.
Mascariñas took to social media to give a scathing rebuke of the PBA in a commentary titled “The Sign in the Window: The PBA and the Cost of Living Within a Lie.” There, he suggested that the PBA once “told a beautiful story” of a “professional league built on parity” where “any team, on any given season, could rise.” It was, according to Mascariñas, “a story fans wanted to believe.”
But not anymore, he said, as that story has “slowly turned into ritual.”
Salary Cap Violations and Their Effect on Parity
Then came the “juicy” part. Mascariñas point-blank said that “the salary cap was violated”—with “a few large corporations” being the ultimate beneficiaries.
“Everyone knew… The salary cap was violated, not occasionally, not accidentally, but systemically. And yet, the sign stayed in the window,” Mascariñas pointed out. “We pretended balance existed while rosters quietly concentrated power. We pretended rules mattered while enforcement looked the other way. We pretended championships were earned on equal footing while a few large corporations assembled multiple superstars with impunity.”
“This is how systems decay, not through collapse, but through consent,” said Mascariñas, who essentially accused the PBA of allowing these violations of the salary cap.
The well-known business tycoon doubled down on his initial point, noting how these violations “were openly talked about in whispers, joked about in bars, and analyzed endlessly by fans.” Despite this, Mascariñas said the PBA has not confronted this dishonesty, perpetuating a competitive imbalance that hit smaller-market teams, in particular.
“The consequences became unavoidable,” Mascariñas further wrote. “Competitive imbalance hardened. Dynasties became predictable. Smaller-market teams entered seasons knowing the ceiling was already fixed. And fans, once among the most passionate in Asia, slowly tuned out.”
The PBA’s Lost Legitimacy and How the League Can Regain It
All this, according to the business leader, has also resulted in the PBA losing its legitimacy, with often-empty arenas as a sign of fan disinterest serving as the most damning evidence.
“Some argue this is simply reality, that strong teams will always dominate, that money always finds a way, that enforcement is messy, that fans should just accept it,” Mascariñas pointed out. “That is how decline is rationalized. The powerful say: this is inevitable. The rest are told to adjust. But history shows something else. Systems that refuse to name reality lose legitimacy first, then relevance.”
But all is not lost. Himself a supporter of local hoops, Mascariñas noted that the PBA can reclaim its lost stature as “Asia’s gold standard, a league admired not just for talent, but for structure, competitiveness, and pride.” However, if that were to happen, the PBA will need honesty—not nostalgia, not louder marketing, not cosmetic reforms.
HONESTY.
“Honesty that the salary cap has been compromised. Honesty that selective enforcement destroyed parity. Honesty that allowing ‘everyone to break the rules’ did not create fairness, it erased it,” said Mascariñas, who then emphasized the need for action to follow that long-needed honesty.
What action must be undertaken then?
“It means enforcing the cap without exception, especially against the biggest teams. It means transparency in contracts, penalties, and audits. It means protecting the league’s long-term integrity over short-term dominance. It means choosing credibility over convenience,” Mascariñas further pointed out.
For him, it’s about practicing fairness, not performing it as if it were theater. Only then, he said, will the PBA regain that lofty stature.
(You can read Mascariñas’s article in full below.)
