Practicing for Japan

Coach Vincent “Chot” Reyes knows all about reboots.

He basically had to perform one when he assumed the reins of the national basketball program. The former Talk ‘N Text mentor was coming off a season in the Philippine Basketball Association where he had steered the Tropang Texters to back-to-back All-Filipino crowns, something no team had done in over two decades. And here he was, tasked to redo the Smart Gilas blueprint. While it certainly was a smart idea to groom a bunch of amateurs together and throw in a naturalized big man until they become a formidable unit for international competitions, that plan became moot when certain events called for a little more urgency. And thus came Gilas Pilipinas.

“We took a look at it as starting from scratch, except that we already had Marcus Douthit,” said Reyes.

With the 27th Fiba Asia championship looming, the plan for Gilas 2.0 was to draw up the best team using the PBA as a talent pool. Reyes is a master at building teams. “I have no illusions of being the best tactical coach, but I do know how to build teams,” he said. If he could just have the free hand to dip into the talent-rich rosters of the PBA ballclubs, everything would be fine.

But in a highly politicized organization like the PBA, with each franchise owner looking after his team’s interests, there is hardly such a thing as a complete freedom to raid rosters for the national team. So while mining the PBA for Gilas Pilipinas talents was the easiest and most logical idea to pursue, it was also the thorniest path to take.

“Very few players did not want to join the national team,” said Reyes. “What complicated the issue was the stand of their mother teams.”

That complication, however, bore its own advantages.

“There were players who were not allowed to join the national team but still joined anyway,” Reyes said.

That meant one thing: “When the team was formed, the players who were picked were the ones who really wanted to be there.”

Among those who wanted to be there were four players from Talk ‘N Text: Ranidel de Ocampo, a 6-foot-5 forward whose low post guile is complemented by a soft touch from the perimeter; former Ateneo hotshot Larry Fonacier, a reliable three-point threat with a lot of championship poise; Jayson Castro William, a cat-quick playmaker who Reyes described as “the best point guard in the PBA today, especially for my system,” and Jimmy Alapag, the veteran former MVP who was eventually named team skipper.

Also making the team were Rain or Shine teammates Gabe Norwood and Jeff Chan. Norwood was actually on his second stint as a national player, having suited up for the 2007 squad in the Tokushima, Japan, edition of the Fiba Asia tilt. Chan was plucked for the same reason Fonacier was given a roster spot. The 6-foot-2 guard can knock down treys with relative consistency. Ginebra’s LA Tenorio, the MVP of the Philippines’ Jones Cup conquest the year before, was given another shot at quarterbacking the national team. Globalport’s Gary David, a legitimate lights-out scorer, and Japeth Aguilar, an athletic 6-foot-9 rim-rattler, also joined the squad.

San Mig Coffee was represented by Marc Pingris, an undersized power forward known for his hustle and energy. The last player to make the cut was 6-foot-10 June Mar Fajardo, the No. 1 overall pick of the 2012 draft by Petron Blaze. The Cebuano youngster eased out Rain or Shine’s triple-heaving big man Beau Belga, the 6-foot-5 round mound of I’ll-pound-your-ass-if-you-mess-with-me center who became a valuable 13th man for the squad.

Douthit, the New York native naturalized in March 2011 to man the middle for the Philippine team, reinforced those 11 players.

These were the players Reyes was going to war with.

* * *

AS the sun rose on Day 4 of the Fiba Asia tournament, there were questions as to how Gilas Pilipinas would respond from what seemed like a devastating loss to Chinese Taipei the day before. Chot Reyes said he had no illusions of going undefeated in the tournament. But with certain developments in a powerhouse bracket, the loss pointed Philippines straight to powerhouse China.

This was certainly not the plan. From the day the groups were drawn, Kazakhstan was the plan for the quarterfinals. Would Reyes perform yet another reboot, this time of the tournament strategy?

Band of Brothers.

It was certainly an intriguing rest day for Gilas Pilipinas. The team had a day to let the loss marinate. How would the players react? Would Reyes, who forward Ranidel de Ocampo joked has a flair for the dramatic, whip out an impassioned speech before the team practiced at Reston gym in Bonifacio Global City? The occasion certainly called for it. Reyes certainly needed to gather his troops, tell them how huge a loss the previous day had been and create another rallying battle cry for the second round of the 27th Fiba Asia tournament.

So guess how Gilas Pilipinas treated Day 4 of the tournament?

“We practiced for the next game. That was it,” Reyes said.

Really? No speeches? Nothing special?

“We had no thoughts about Chinese Taipei. We met at the hotel. We watched film. We pointed out the technical things that we needed to work on,” he said. “I left it to the players to talk about whatever they needed to talk about. As far as I was concerned, we were practicing for Japan. Jimmy spoke. Marcus said something and that was it.”

“We just talked about the need to keep an even keel and not let one game be a defining moment for us,” said Alapag. “That was it. The night before, we decided to let it go. We didn’t want any negative emotion during practice. Sure, we remembered how disappointed we were. But we used it as fuel.”

“We just reminded ourselves that one game doesn’t decide a tournament,” Douthit added.

And so it was just another practice day for Gilas Pilipinas. You could not tell at all that the team was coming off a tough loss from the night before. Heck, if the Filipinos went undefeated in the first round, you wouldn’t have noticed it too.  That’s how Reyes wanted it.

“We wanted to treat it as one of those things. You fall, you stand back up. That’s all,” he said.

But as the players huddled at halftime, as they broke up another practice with a united chant of “puso!” (heart!), you kind of got the sense that once Day 5 rolled around, Japan was toast.

Part 5, up Sept. 2, 7 pm, Manila time.