Thailand coach rues poor offense in sorry loss to Indonesia

Thailand coach Tim Lewis. PBA IMAGES

Thailand coach Tim Lewis rued his team’s poor shooting that led to a 60-59 defeat to Indonesia on Sunday in the 2017 Seaba Championship.

“Obviously, we’d love to win, but it wasn’t a must win. It was a game that we felt is going to be competitive and over the years, these guys have been back and forth in terms of their rivalry,” he said as he expounded on the basketball rivalry between Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

“I thought we played better in the first 10 to 13 minutes of the game. I thought we’re doing a good job. We were executing offensively, we were doing a great job defensively. At the end of the day, we limited them to 60, which is a great defensive effort. But we just couldn’t fire offensively. We just got to make adjustments on that,” said Lewis, whose team absorbed its first loss after a 2-0 start.

Fortunately for Thailand, it welcomed back its star player Chitchai Ananti, who is leading the tournament in scoring with 24.0 points to go along with 6.5 rebounds and 2.0 assists. He missed the Thais’ win over Vietnam on Saturday due to a leg injury.

Lewis believes a little more fine-tuning on Ananti’s game will do wonders as he pegs the 6-foot-2 swingman as the undeniable key to the future of Thailand basketball.

“He’s a very talented player. He’s long, athletic, super quick. I haven’t seen somebody who covers the ground as quickly as he does. He’s still learning the game though. His basketball IQ is still not as high as it needs to be and sometimes, his decision making is lacking, but he has an ability to change game,” he said.

“If we could get him to learn more about the game and understand situations, then he could be a really good player.”