Dwight Ramos Is Finally Playing His Own Game

When Dwight Ramos talks about the player who made him fall in love with basketball, he does not name a teammate, a coach, or even somebody whose game looks remotely like his own. He goes back to his childhood in California, where he watched Kobe Bryant on television during Game 4 of the Lakers-Suns series in 2006. Bryant stole the ball with the clock nearly gone, dribbled toward the elbow, and pulled up. Buzzer. Ball game. The Lakers win.

Ramos can still picture that moment clearly. But for all his love of Kobe and the Mamba mythology surrounding his childhood, he grew into the opposite kind of player. “I wish. I wish I played like Kobe,” he tells GQ Philippines. “But you know, I feel like I just kind of play my own style. Cause I know what I can do, I know my limitations, and I just try and make the most of what I can do.”

At 28, Ramos is no longer trying to be the player he grew up watching. If anything, he has spent years figuring out what the game actually needs from him.

In late August, that meant surviving one of the most demanding stretches of his national team career. Against Jordan, Ramos spent more than 37 minutes on the floor in an 82–81 overtime win, a game in which Gilas Pilipinas fell behind by 12 in the first quarter before fighting its way back. By overtime, however, his body had started filing complaints, with cramps settling in across his calves and quads. Eventually, the coaches had to take him out.

“I was just thinking, ‘How am I going to get through this?’” Ramos remembers. So he did something that does not necessarily make for a great highlight clip. He sat down and cheered. CJ Perez and Kevin Quiambao closed out the game, and Ramos watched from the bench.

The Philippines won another close one without requiring Ramos to become its superhero. But just two nights later, he nearly became one anyway.

Gilas again fell behind early against Iran, then slowly worked its way back into the game. Ramos found his rhythm, attacking a matchup he felt he could exploit because he was bigger than the Iranian guards without sacrificing speed. He hit the three that pushed the Philippines in front, then knocked down another jumper late in the fourth as Gilas completed a 68–56 win. The victory also ended the Philippines’ long FIBA drought against Iran, dating back to 2015.

What made that night even more improbable was that he had almost stayed home.

He woke up sick that morning, scrambling to figure out how to feel better before tip-off. He drank vitamin C, took medicine, slept as much as he could, and hoped his body would cooperate. “But, you know, for me, it was never a question, I was gonna play regardless,” he says.

Putting in the Work

There is very little theatrics in the way Ramos talks about basketball. Even when discussing the significance of finally beating Iran, he does not dwell on the history. He was thinking about the next World Cup and the games the national team needed to win. The equation, to him, was straightforward: win the game in front of you. That pragmatism has become a defining feature of his career, particularly because it did not begin with the kind of momentum that would suggest where he would eventually end up.

Growing up in California, Ramos played almost every sport. His parents put him and his brother Eli into baseball, football, swimming, tennis, and basketball. Eventually, only one of those sports followed him home. He wanted basketball shoes. He wanted a new basketball for Christmas. He wanted anything and everything that had something to do with the sport.

In high school, his game looked promising. Then he got to college, and things became considerably less glamorous. Ramos had been a prolific scorer, but at Cal State Fullerton he barely saw the floor at all. The kid who had been putting up huge numbers suddenly found himself watching from the sideline. This eventually led him to transfer to Cal Poly Pomona, but even then, the breakthrough he was waiting for did not come.

For a young player, that kind of disappearance can be difficult to process. Ramos remembers arriving at college without really knowing what to do with himself. “I was coming from high school where I was scoring 30 points a game, but when I got to college, I didn’t even get on the court.”

What the athlete did next was less dramatic than a comeback montage, but probably more important. Having read The Slight Edge, a book about the cumulative effect of small, consistent decisions, he took the idea almost literally. If he was not getting minutes, he would still train. If a game ended without him playing, he would lift weights afterward. He would shoot at 5 a.m., even knowing there was a good chance he would spend the next game on the bench. 

The opportunity never really arrived in the United States. Instead, it came after he moved to the Philippines. But even that was another unexpected turn. Ramos had originally planned to play for Ateneo de Manila University, but the pandemic disrupted that trajectory. Rather than beginning his UAAP career, he went straight into professional basketball in Japan, joining the Toyama Grouses before later moving to Levanga Hokkaido, where he remains.

The geography of that move is important, as Ramos had spent most of his life in California, surrounded by his parents, sister, brother, and familiar routines. Suddenly, he was on the other side of the world.

His brother was with him in the Philippines, but in Japan, Ramos was largely on his own. “I was kind of split,” Ramos muses. “I was missing people from different parts of the world.”

He describes overseas basketball like an endless loop of ordinary chores performed by yourself, a far cry from the glossy version that sometimes appears on social media. Get to practice. Wash your clothes. Cook your food. Train. Play. Travel. Come home. Do it again. A bad game means nobody is immediately there to help you shake it off. A great game can feel strangely quiet when there is nobody around to celebrate it with.

“It gets lonely sometimes because you’re just by yourself, good or bad,” he says. “But then you just got to figure it out.” 

There is something important in that last part, as Ramos did not turn this loneliness into a dramatic story about overcoming adversity. He learned to function within it, as being on his own made him more disciplined and more appreciative of the people he had. 

The discipline he developed in those quieter years would eventually become the foundation for the player he is now. 

The Making of a Mainstay

Gilas Pilipinas turned that persistence into something people could see. He first joined the Philippines’ national team in 2020, when he was more concerned with not messing up than making an impression. He remembers being nervous, hoping simply to play solidly enough to earn another invitation. Instead, he kept getting called back, and what began as a chance to don a Gilas jerseyJerseyA shirt worn by players on a sports team, usually printed with the team's colors, a player's name, and a number. Jerseys have become streetwear staples, and wearing one fromGo to Jersey Glossary gradually became one of the constants of his career. “I just kept getting called back, and I kept showing up and showing up, and I guess it’s that consistency that brought me here.” 

When Ramos started at Gilas, he was one of the younger players in the room, watching veterans and learning where he fit. Over time, the roster changed, and the dynamic shifted. Younger players arrived, and Ramos found himself becoming one of the players expected to set an example. 

“I was just growing as a player and as a person, just trying to fit in with the new guys and find my role,” he says. “But that’s one of the things I kind of learned was how to adapt.”

That adaptability is also why his leadership does not look particularly loud. He has taken on a heavier leadership role with Gilas, but he has no interest in performing leadership for its own sake. Basketball culture often celebrates the loudest guy in the room—the player giving speeches, waving his arms, demanding attention. Ramos has never been particularly interested in auditioning for that role. “To me, leadership is seeing somebody you respect, and following in their example,” he explains. “It’s mostly leading by action.”

This sentiment is also telling in the way that he thinks about reliability, which he considers harder to master than simply becoming a better player. Improving at basketball can happen incrementally, by adding something here and sharpening something there, but becoming someone teammates can depend on is more demanding because it comes with the expectation that you will get things right even when you do not feel your best. 

“You have to try and do everything right. So it’s kind of like chasing perfection,” Ramos says.

For Ramos, that pressure for perfection is also part of what makes representing the country so meaningful. The expectations surrounding the national team can be enormous in a basketball-mad country like the Philippines. Yet, he acknowledges that responsibility while also seeing something on the other side of it: an audience of thousands, sometimes millions, of people caring enough to watch. 

“The pressure that is put on the whole team is a lot, but at the same time, it’s very rewarding because you get to see the whole country supporting you. And I feel like it’s better to be that way than to be the other way around, where, you know, you’re wishing somebody would watch the game.” 

Just a Regular Dude

Playing for the Philippines has also made his Filipino identity more visible. In America, Ramos says, people may not have known he was Filipino. Now there is no ambiguity: he’s Gilas No. 24, a professional basketball player in Japan, and a familiar face at international tournaments. Despite this, he is conscious of the difference between the public character and the actual person.

“At the end of the day, I come home, and I live the same life like everyone else does,” he says. “I just kind of come home, watch movies, play video games, and eat good food. I’m just a regular dude, honestly.”

When he gets a genuine break, his ideal weekend is similarly uncomplicated. He’s either on a lake or beach, cooking something on the barbecue, listening to music, or spending time outdoors. On off days, he tries to disappear from his phone altogether. For all the attention that comes with playing for Gilas, his life away from basketball remains pretty simple. 

And that’s probably a good thing, because Ramos knows that a career in basketball does not last forever. 

“I think I’m trying to prove to myself, to kind of see how far I can take it,” he explains. “I’m 28 now, and I don’t know how much basketball I’m going to play, so I’m just trying to do as much as I can with my short basketball career and just see how good I can be, and how far I can take this whole thing, and then hopefully leave a good legacy when I’m done.”

Presented by Clear Men.

SHOOT CREDITS:

Story by GABRIEL YAP. Photographs by BORGY ANGELES. Styling by GENO ESPIDOL. Makeup: XENG ZULUETA. Hair: JA FELICIANO. Photographer’s Assistant: ROJ MAGUYON. Videographer: ROBYN JOSUE. Videographer’s Assistant: YOBHEL VALENZUELA. Styling Assistant: NIÑA CUYANA. Set Design: AD SET.