Why basketball?

It could be a problem with the venue. As you can see, there are "basketball" courts on almost every street corners as it can be played with only one basketball ring. Well for soccer, you can't play this on every corner of the street

I think Filipinos love the game of basketball because it was the only sport we followed and had, continously, for the past 50 decades or so now. From the glory days of the Philippines when it was a contender in world basketball championships, circa 1960s, to the next generations that followed, where new players came and went, with the regular supply of college and university basketball and of course with the advent of the professional league. We may have outstanding athletes in other sports in the past, like bowling (Paeng Nepomuceno)and boxing (the Olympians Villanuevas, Serrantes, Velasco). But they were very isolated victories which did little to tilt the liking of the majority of the Filipinos to those sports. Billiards is making waves (from the late 1990s to now) because of the emergence of new and world class players who can compete with the best in the world. Basketball may forever remain as our favorite national sport, but if we choose to excel in international sports competitions, we should place emphasis on training athletes where skill, and not physical attributes like height and weight, are the standards to clinching victories. (Just like what you said, in billiards, boxing, bowling and maybe soccer. You can also add taekwando and the other martial arts sports). Players from these sports have proven that they can deliver, and its up to the national sports associations governing these athletes to continually nurturing and training them so as to maintain their world class performances and hence continue bringing glory to our country.