More woes hound Gilas PH

The PBA special board meeting has been set on June 5 to discuss the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) and other concerns with regard to the Gilas Pilipinas.

The meeting was an offshoot of SBP president and Meralco representative Al Panlilio’s failure to attend the regular monthly meeting of the PBA board last Thursday.

Panlilio, who was out of the country, requested the special meeting to thresh out problems besetting Gilas Pilipinas in the Fiba Asia Cup in Lebanon this August.

Expected to be discussed in the meeting are the concerns of other board members regarding the conflict of schedule of the Fiba events with the PBA season.

The Fiba Asia Cup tournament will determine 14 of the 16 teams that will play in six home-and-away windows starting November this year until February 2019.

The six windows will decide the seven teams to represent Asia/Oceania in the 2019 FIBA World Cup. China, being the host country is exempted from going through the qualifying process.

Panlilio is also expected to raise the issue about the statement made by PBA board members Alfrancis Chua of Barangay Ginebra and Alaska’s Dickie Bachman that the league has no commitment to SBP on lending players after the Seaba tournament.

If the SBP president fails to address this, then national coach Chot Reyes and Panlilio are facing a gargantuan problem of forming a competitive team for the Asia Cup and the Southeast Asian Games (SEAG).

The availability of the likes of June Mar Fajardo, Japeth Aguilar and Calvin Abueva in the national team will be uncertain, which has tremendous effect in Gilas’ campaign in two international competitions.

Since the Fiba Asia Cup and SEAG fall on August, the country will form two teams.

Coach Reyes will mentor the Philippine team in the Asia Cup while assistant Jong Uichico will coach during the SEAG.

Aside from the Asia Cup and SEAG, Gilas Pilipinas will also campaign in the Jones Cup in July.

The PBA schedule is another problem to be resolved since the All-Filipino conference runs smack into the first two windows of the Fiba event, while the third conference is also in conflict with the window period in June and July.