B.League Manila Games: Gunma Crane Thunders beat Levanga Hokkaido 98-81 behind 16 three-pointers

I replayed the tape of the Gunma Crane Thunders versus Levanga Hokkaido game for the third time, pausing at the 28th minute. On screen, Gunma had just knocked down their 16th three-pointer — a volume I rarely see in a preseason exhibition. Levanga kept their five tall players on the floor, still protecting the paint exactly as planned. When the final buzzer sounded in Manila, the score read 98-81 in favor of the team with no size advantage. Every result is a deliberate lie — and I wanted to know who wrote this number.

The event was called the B.League Manila Games. It was the first international preseason tour in B.League history, staged to mark 70 years of Philippines-Japan diplomatic relations and the league's 10th anniversary. Both Gunma Crane Thunders and Levanga Hokkaido are stable clubs in Japan's professional basketball league.

The most notable angle was human. Dwight Ramos suited up for Gunma, while AJ Edu played for Levanga — two players who are teammates on the Gilas Pilipinas national team. Based on my experience tracking games, matchups like this are often underrated tactically, when in reality they expose each team's thinking quite clearly.

For a game like this, people usually expect a balanced physical battle. Levanga held the better interior height. But basketball does not run on expectations.

Gunma chose the opposite approach: instead of fighting head-on in the paint, they stretched the defense and shot from deep with high volume. Sixteen three-pointers on roughly double the attempts equals above 50% efficiency, and per game data, Gunma shot above 50% on every scoring option on the floor — a rare evenness at this level.

This is a variant of the style built on volume and long-range efficiency, which analysts call Moreyball. What stands out is that Gunma deployed it in an exhibition where the pressure to win was near zero. That a team would trade height for space, even when unnecessary, shows their thinking does not change with the nature of the game.

Individually, Dwight Ramos scored 13 points, second on his team, with three triples. He was an efficient link in Gunma's long-range machine. On the other side, AJ Edu had a quiet scoring night with just 3 points, but compensated with 7 rebounds and 4 assists. In a blowout loss, a player still contributing that diversely is a signal worth noting.

But this is where I must be careful with my own beliefs. An exhibition measures nothing beyond itself. There is no eFG%, no Net Rating, no specific lineup configuration, no playoff context. A winning machine is only an illusion until someone is willing to break it — and in Manila, no one really needed to break it.

The more telling part is the human story. Ramos and Edu are teammates on Gilas, but here they stood on opposite sidelines. Ramos said it was nice to see Edu on the court, but stressed they are on different teams and are only competing to get better. Edu had extra motivation with familiar faces in the stands. Those words are not tactical, but they reveal a layer of emotion the box score skips.

And there is a blind spot here. Levanga's height was noted as an advantage, but throughout the game it was never fully exploited. If Levanga truly wanted to control the game, they should have forced Gunma to play inside. Their failure to do so — or their choice not to — raises a question about how seriously a preseason game was treated.

Basketball never ends with the buzzer, it ends with a question. For the B.League, the remaining question is not the 98-81 score, but whether Manila becomes a springboard for a new footprint for Japanese basketball in Southeast Asia. One exhibition cannot answer that. But it poses a hypothesis compelling enough to track over the next few seasons.