It could be a hide-and-seek first round
It did not sit well with many Filipino fans, but there’s evident wisdom behind the command for Gilas Pilipinas gunslinger Terence Romeo to temper his fiery shooting style.
The national basketball team, bunched with Palestine, Hong Kong and Kuwait in the preliminary round of the Fiba Asia Championship, has been listed as the oldest team, with an average age of 31.
Asi Taulava, at 42, is the oldest competitor in the tournament. He is followed in the Gilas age tally sheet by Dondon Hontiveros, 38. There are five more Gilas members who are 30 or older.
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The initial round will be used by several national squads as a sort of acquaintance or getting-to-know-you period. The venues will be crawling with scouts and spies of all shapes and persuasion.
In the case of the 23-year-old Romeo, the youngest Gilas member, he has been a marked man since the Jones Cup, where he thrilled with his shifty, sizzling goal-making.
By the end of the tournament, he was an identified unpredictable penetrator.
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Gilas coach Tab Baldwin, after the Romeo recital in the Jones Cup, had expressed a wish to keep his artillery under wraps.
It’s not clear if Baldwin, in asking Romeo to cool down, would also assign the national team neophyte to the perimeter where Gilas was visibly deficient.
The clearest that Baldwin did was order Romeo to lead his team, a snide command after the young sizzler played blind and bungled a major defensive ploy during their build-up camp in Cebu last week.
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Anyway, it goes without saying that teams that can afford it will try to pull the punches by hiding the exact caliber of certified scorers in the early goings in Changsha in Hunan, China. And with the scouts and spies all over, there is bound to be hide-and-seek sessions in the preliminary round of the Asian basketball championship.
Going by its might and achievement, Iran, listed as complete from top to bottom, is easily the most exposed and fully identified contingent.
This is not the case with host China, which will parade at least four seven-footers in a bid to regain supremacy in the region.
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Before the end of the preliminary round, opponents should have an idea of the Chinese team, mainly the quality of its tall men.
In the case of naturalized center Andray Blatche, Gilas could have the luxury of hiding what he has gained or regained in Cebu during the preliminary round.
Of course, there’s still the danger of the Gilas national team encountering some turbulence, as had happened in its game against Hong Kong in the 2013 Fiba Asia series at Mall of Asia Arena.
The Philippines plays Hong Kong on Thursday, following its first assignment against Palestine on Wednesday.
If ever, the biological age of the Gilas team should not show later, mainly at crunch time in the medal round of the continental Olympic qualifying tournament.
