"OKC Thunder coach planned to recruit Rene Baterbonia after seeing his potential during his basketball games," the overlaid Tagalog-language text on a TikTok clip reads.
The post has racked up over 869,000 views since it was published on July 20. It claims Baterbonia "would've been the first pure Filipino to join the NBA".
The TikTok video shows Mark Daigneault, head coach of the NBA's Oklahoma City Thunder (OKC Thunder), speaking at a press conference (archived link).
Daigneault can be heard saying they planned to draft Baterbonia, an 18-year-old college student at Ateneo De Manila University, before he died (archived here and here).
"Over the past year, our scouts closely followed Rene Baterbonia and were impressed by his talent, work ethic, and potential," he appears to say in the clip.
"Internally, we were preparing to select him in the 2026 to 2027 NBA draft and had even discussed a multi-year contract worth approximately 25 million US dollars."
"Unfortunately, events took an unexpected turn, and those plans will never become real."
Social media users shared the same clip on TikTok and Facebook, after Baterbonia and teammate Divine Adili drowned during a team-building exercise in the eastern Philippines on June 8 (archived link).
Their deaths and the subsequent investigation by authorities unleashed a frenzy of social media posts about Baterbonia, a promising small-town athlete recently recruited into collegiate basketball.
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