Photo by Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net
National team coach Yeng Guiao was left marveling at the abundance of talent after the country’s brightest basketball stars aligned on Monday for the Philippine team’s first practice ahead of the fourth window of the Fiba World Cup Asian Qualifiers.
“We are awed, we are delighted at having the most talented players in the PBA in one building, in one court,” Guiao told reporters after practice. “It’s been a while since we brought together this kind of talent in one building, in one court.”
Guiao named 16 players to be part of the national team pool and everyone showed up, including Barangay Ginebra’s Scottie Thompson and Greg Slaughter, San Miguel Beer’s Marcio Lassiter and Alex Cabagnot and Magnolia’s Ian Sangalang.
Joining the five in training were the Asian Games core of Christian Standhardinger, Stanley Pringle, Paul Lee, Gabe Norwood, Beau Belga, JP Erram, Raymond Almazan and Asi Taulava.
Standhardinger and company were fresh off a fifth-place finish in the recently-concluded Asiad. The result was the country’s best finish in men’s basketball since 2002.
Also attending training were Japeth Aguilar, Matthew Wright and Allein Maliksi. Aguilar and Wright, however, will only be allowed to play against Qatar on Sept. 17 and will miss the clash with Iran four days earlier after getting slapped with a one-game suspension for their involvement in the ugly brawl with Australia last July 2.
Guiao thinks the collection of star power at his disposal is the most talent he’s seen in recent memory.
“We don’t even have the likes of June Mar (Fajardo), Jayson (Castro), Troy (Rosario), (Roger) Pogoy. There are more. It means, it will be a headache for any coach to choose only 12 among all of these,” he said.
“There are a lot of players to choose from and you will pick just 12 so that’s going to cause headache, but it’s a good problem,” he added. “What we don’t want is not having a selection to choose from so we have a good problem.”
Guiao got a first look at Thompson, Slaughter, Lassiter, Cabagnot and Sangalang and seeing the five team up with Pringle and the rest of the Asiad players had him licking his chops.
“I’m impressed. I’m excited to see them play for the national team. I feel that we have the materials to compete with Iran and Qatar in this window,” Guiao said. “It’s just going to be a matter of how we’ll be able to orchestrate and blend all these talents together.”
“It’s always that sense of anticipation when you’re experiencing that’s new. For them, it’s their first time and it’s my first time as well to work with them. It’s kind of a feeling out situation but you can already see that it’s something positive.”