Andray Blatche exchanges high fives with his Gilas Pilipinas teammates during their game against Iran. Photo from Fiba.com
Naturalized player Andray Blatche feels right at home as he finally rejoined Gilas Pilipinas during its Sunday afternoon practice at Meralco Gym.
“I miss it a lot. It’s good to see of a lot familiar faces, friends, and coaches,” he said.
But a lot has changed the last time the Syracuse native was with the national team, a fact that he didn’t fail to notice.
“I see Japeth (Aguilar) and June Mar (Fajardo) got a lot better, hell of a lot better. I wish them good,” he said. “I see we have a lot of great shooters,” he said, pointing at Allein Maliksi, Matthew Wright, and Roger Pogoy.”
“Also that new tall kid over there. I can tell you, he brings a lot of energy and outside shooting too,” Blatche said, pertaining to Raymond Almazan.
Though Blatche liked what he saw on the court, he said he was still feeling the effects of his 19-hour flight from Atlanta.
“It was good to be on the court but I’m just extremely sleepy. I’m tired. From Atlanta to LA it took five hours, then had a two hour layover, and 11 hours more from LA to here,” he shared. “It’s hard to sleep on the plane and the time difference didn’t help. When I get to my room, I’ll immediately go to sleep.”
Blatche is raring to go with only four days left before the 2017 SEABA Championship unfolds.
“We got a couple more days to go before the tournament starts. We’ll come out with a win, nothing less,” he said. “This is my first time to play in the SEABA, so I’m not familiar with it. But as long as we do our job, we will be successful.”