Gilas to hold closed-door practices starting Monday

Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net

Gilas Pilipinas coach Tab Baldwin will start restricting public access to Gilas Pilipinas practices at Meralco Gym starting on Monday.

“Starting tomorrow (Monday), all practices at the Meralco Gym will be closed to the public, and for the media, we will have a pre-practice and post-practice interviews,” Baldwin said.

The stern coach admitted that with all eyes on the national team at this time, it’s unavoidable that the visitors will snap pictures and shoot videos of the session and unknowingly post snippets of the team’s plays that could be picked up by other teams on social media.

“A lot of videos are showing up on Twitter of pieces of our practices. It cannot happen, whether they come from the media or whether they come from the those sitting at the stands. That’s the age we live in and the only we way we can counter that is by removing that element from our practices,” he said. 

“It’s not an antagonistic situation. It’s a reality situation that people sitting there can have their phones out and start taking videos. We don’t want all those clips showing up because it might be something that we don’t want to be out in public forum.”

Since returning to practice on May 18, Gilas Pilipinas has allowed fans to watch its practices, with the public getting a look at the drills and offensive sets Baldwin is trying to incorporate with the team.

But with the buildup for the Fiba Olympic qualifying tournament now in its crucial stage and the arrival of naturalized center Andray Blatche, security will be tightened to make sure no information will be leaked that can be used by opposing teams to their advantage.

“Now that we got our team together, it’s time now to start restricting the flow of information from our practices. It was always going to happen and that time has arrived now,” said Baldwin. “We appreciate everybody on how much they care, and we will have somewhere along the way a practice or two that we open up to the public and we’ll publicize that when we do. It may not be a system practice but more of a shooting practice.”

“I hope everyone understands and takes into consideration. Our position of what we’re trying to do is build a team that’s gonna be successful in representing the country and we will do that intelligently.”/rga