Marcel Mercado - Professional Basketball Player

           When thinking of an interesting person to interview, I couldn’t help but think of my uncle Marcel Mercado. He is definitely an old school type of person, one of those types that doesn’t really know a lot about the new trends and technology in this day of age but he is a pretty cool guy. He has lived an interesting life to say the least; he has a family of 4 with a wife and two kids.  He has done many interesting things with his life but what people should know about him is that he played professional basketball overseas and became an electrical engineer when things went wrong with his basketball career.

           Mr. Mercado is a former professional basketball player that played in the Philippine basketball association (PBA). Even though he played overseas, his career did not start there. He was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley here in LA and loved to play basketball. It’s the one sport that many Filipinos love to play, as well as myself. When asked about how he first started playing, he stated that, “it was all because of my dad”. He told me about how his father would bring him to a local gym in his area and would just shoot hoops and play one on one with.  He then said that it became a daily routine and just fell in love with it, “it was like love at first sight”, he said. As he grew older and older he gradually became better at it. So when middle school arrived his dad put him in a travel ball team.  A travel team is basically a program where kids can join and travel around the city or state and there are some programs that are bigger and will travel around the country. Since he was just starting his father decided to just join a local travel team. As a young kid marcel was an average size person, nothing really to impressive about him but when he reached high school he hit a growth spurt and grew to be six foot and five inches. This is when he really started to get serious and thought that he could go somewhere with it. Throughout high school not many colleges wanted him other than junior colleges, but schools in the Philippines did. 3 schools offered him full ride scholarships for him to play for them. It was not just schools offering him to play but also pro scouts wanted him to play for their team. He wanted the fastest route to become a professional athlete so that is why he decided to stay and play here at Pierce junior college. Reason is because if you play college basketball in the Philippines, the player must stay in school for all 4 years to be eligible to be in the PBA draft but if you play outside of the country, you will be labeled as in import and a player does not even need to play college ball, as long as the talent level is there and he knows the right people then you can get drafted. With all this being said, Mr. Mercado said that, “he was not ready to play with the big boys at that time”. He wanted to get better and stronger and play at a higher level so when the time comes he would be ready for the pros. 2 years later after playing basketball here, he declared for the PBA draft and was a 2nd round draft pick by the coca cola tigers but are now called powerade tigers. Unlike the teams here where the names are from the city they play at, teams over there are named after their sponsers. He told me that, that was one of the best feeling he ever had. Being a professional athlete was one of his life long dreams but it was cut early from injuries. He played 6 seasons with the coca cola tigers and decided to call it quits from all the knee injuries that he sustained. “it was fun while it lasted”, he said