Gilas Pilipinas: 3 steps to a nigthmare

OFTEN a blazing blur, Jason Castro did appear heaven-sent with his meteoric sniping that saved the drippy first game of Gilas Pilipinas against unheralded Saudi Arabia on Thursday, opening day of the Fiba Asia championship.

The expectant home crowd, with many wondering if Gilas had overtrained, was one in swearing the national squad could not go on playing sloppily if it hoped to at least survive through the first stage of the Asian championship at Mall of Asia Arena.

There, indeed, was a pleasant turnaround the following day, but it did not come easy. Gilas groped hard against rugged Jordan in the first half and needed a big kick before erecting a 10-point lead after three quarters.

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The final 10 minutes of action was a first-class theater, intense and close enough to send the home audience rising repeatedly for the communal wave, a first of its massive kind at MOA Arena.

Gilas matched its daring defense with great shooting and sniping—with Castro often the spearhead—to beat Jordan, 77-71.

“Heart, they were all heart,” swore an overjoyed tyke at ringside, quickly claiming Gilas Pilipinas was “the greatest Philippine national basketball team ever assembled.”

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Fireworks lit the skies outside  MOA Arena. A great part of the overflow crowd stayed behind to give the Nationals their deserved ovation. Out in the streets, fans stayed up late talking of the big, balanced Gilas game and the great possibilities.

There was a great defensive effort, with Gabe Norwood at the forefront but, through it all, Castro got singled out for his heroic ferocity.

But lost in the euphoria was the unmasking of the Gilas team’s shallow middle wall.

Although Marcus Douthit managed to stand severe pounding in the slot, he visibly faded and softened in the crucial exchanges, thereby causing three successive turnovers that put Gilas back in danger again.

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Anyway, Gilas did beat Jordan with superior speed and shooting, but the size and shape of its defensive wall remained suspect as the team took on Chinese Tapei for its third assignment on Saturday.

There was little to worry about Douthit as he was not facing a truly awesome slot rival in Quincy Davis.

In fact, Chinese Taipei, which Gilas had beaten in at least two previous meetings, was not ranked a first-rate threat to the Philippine squad.

There were great expectations about a neat 3-0 Stage 1 finish for Gilas although it again groped at the start, as it did the day before in the game against Jordan.

The Philippines took the half (43-42) before Larry Fonacier put on a one-man shooting show as he frolicked with 16 points, most of them three-pointers, in the third quarter.

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Up by 13 points at the start of the final quarter, Gilas regrouped for the finishing kick.

Chinese Taipei had a bigger, nobler plan. It refused to panic and instead put on a patented scoring exhibition while riddling the hapless Gilas defense with unreachable triples.

The result was a nightmare for Team Philippines, made more galling by the fact that the Nationals were totally unprepared for the phantom onslaught from the arc.

Coach Chot Reyes, not knowing what hit him, slumped on the bench, grasped his dizzy head, before apologizing.

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They did try to stop the blitz baskets, but the Nationals were readily reduced to sitting ducks by their sharp-shooting opponents who would make an instant leap before launching their fleet shot at the peak of a jump.

In ordinary parlance, they call this move “shooting from the wrong foot.”

The authentic shot was always impossible to stop for those who either don’t know what it was all about or to those who refused to believe in it.

It was first perfected and made visible in Asia by the legendary South Korean deadshot Shin Dong-pa.

The Chinese relied heavily on this phantom practice when they started to dominate Asian basketball after their sweep of the 1975 Asian Basketball Confederation championship in Bangkok.