Joko plans to enter modeling despite his basketball career

JAKARTA (JP): Young and good looking, Antonius Joko Endratmo is looking to strike out in a profession a world away from his current job in Indonesia' professional basketball league (Kobatama).

The 22-year-old forward, who is currently training for the 20th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, said he would try his luck in modeling if he received any offers from talent scouts.

"Many people told me I should be a model. If I have the chance, and if there is anybody who offers me a job, I will take it," he told The Jakarta Post last week.

He said after leading his team, Panasia Indosyntec, to their second-straight Kobatama title in 1998, he was approached by film agents who asked him to star in a television series, known here as sinetron.

Following the team's victory, Joko was named the league's Most Valuable Player.

"At the time, I turned down the offers because I had no thought of becoming a sinetron actor," he said.

Joko said, however, he would not leave basketball in the near future because the sport provided him financial support.

"I will play basketball as long as I can. I can pay for my studies from my salary," he said. He is a second-year student at the School of Economics at state-run Padjadjaran University in Bandung, West Java.

He said he received over Rp 1 million a month from the Bandung-based basketball club.

Born on Sept. 27, he began his basketball career on a junior club in his hometown of Yogyakarta. "After a while, I felt that my career was not going anywhere there. There is no bigger club to join," he said.

He went to Semarang in 1995 and joined the Glory club. The following year, the club was disbanded and he and several players followed former Glory coach Danny Kosasih, who is coaching the SEA Games team, to Bandung.

"It was Danny who suggested to me that I join Panasia," he said.

Joko said the club had taught him discipline. "If we come late for practice, the boss cuts our salary. The morning practice is from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., while the evening session is from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

"We have to be on the court before 8:10 a.m. If we perform well, we get bonuses, but if not, we will get a warning," he said, adding that the club is under the management of textile company PT Panasia Filament Inti, a subsidiary of publicly listed PT Panasia Indosyntec.

Two other players from Panasia, I Gde Agus Wahyudi and Saut Lambok Johnson, have also been selected for the SEA Games squad.

Debut

Joko will be making his SEA Games debut this year.

"Our team will try to get the silver. I will play my best until the referee blows his whistle to end the game. At that moment, we'll know whether we won or lost," he said.

In early July, he and the other members of the SEA Games squad went to the Philippines to compete in the six-day Southeast Asian Basketball Association championship.

Although the Indonesian team did not finish in the top three in the championship, Joko said the team could now develop new strategies to tackle Asian basketball giants the Philippine.

"They are tall and have good skills. We are far below them, but at least we can learn new strategies to beat them in the Games," he said, adding that the Philippine squad would probably differ from the one they faced in the championship.

The Philippine basketball team won the gold medal at the 1997 SEA Games, while Indonesia came in fourth after it was defeated by Thailand.

"Indonesian basketball players are as tall as the Filipinos, but we lack agility," he said.(ivy)