Photo by Sherwin Vardeleon/INQUIRER
Gilas Pilipinas may have come out of the first leg of the 2019 Fiba World Cup Asian qualifiers unscathed, but that didn’t stop one of the team’s chief backers from calling out Andray Blatche.
Bounty Agro Ventures Inc. president Ronald Mascariñas minced no words in criticizing Blatche affer the Philippine team scored a pair of wins at the expense of Japan and Chinese Taipei.
“Blatche has to shape up. I don’t think he was an asset to the team with his condition in the last two games. I think it’s something the coaching staff should seriously look into,” Mascariñas said.
Blatche averaged just 9.5 points on 30 percent shooting, 13.0 rebounds, 4.0 assists, 2.0 steals, and 4.0 blocks against Japan and Taipei.
But what hurt Gilas the most was his 6 turnovers a game.
He akso had his worst offensive game as part of Gilas against Chinese Taipei on Monday.
Mascariñas observed that Blatche struggles rubbed off on the team as the Philippines started the game flat and fell behind early before getting its act together to pull off the gutsy 90-83 victory.
“You can see that the team is still not fluid and I know they can play better. But the good thing is that we know the team is in good hands. Coach Chot (Reyes) knows how to win important games like this and so far, so good. We won the games that mattered for us,” he said.
As per Reyes, Blatche apologized to the team after his subpar showing and vowed to bounce back stronger.
But Mascariñas expects nothing less from the former NBA veteran, especially with a showdown against mighty Australia next in February.
“If we’ll play the same way we did to start against Chinese Taipei, we don’t stand a chance against Australia. We should do much, much better. Our execution should be perfect so we’ll have a chance against Australia,” he said.