Gilas Pilipinas guard Paul Lee. FIBA PHOTO
FOSHAN, China—Back in the PBA, Paul Lee has never been known to be a dirty player, in fact, he has been on the losing end of some of the most gruesome hits in the league the past few years.
And with the Filipinos being outsized by everyone else in the Fiba World Cup here, it is believable when Lee said that an acting job by Serbia’s Marko Guduric was sold very well that made his coach brand the Filipinos as “dirty.”
“It was a flop,” Lee said after practice Tuesday night as the Filipinos prime up for a game against Angola in less than 24 hours for the right to stay in the race as the best Asian team in the Fiba World Cup. “I just did my job defending him.”
READ: Serbian coach thinks Gilas Pilipinas not worthy playing top Euro teams
Guduric lay on the floor for a good minute before getting up. And while he was down there, coach Sasha Djordjevic was berating game officials and pointing an accusing finger at the Gilas bench for what had happened.
But was there really contact?
“It was a slight nudge,” Lee said in Filipino. “It was also not an intentional nudge, but one that I needed to do because I was playing defense. He is a lot bigger than me. Do you think I can take him down just like that?”
Lee, who needed dental surgery several years back when Talk ‘N Text’s Ivan Johnson drilled him with an intentional elbow, would rather put the incident behind and focus on the task at hand for Gilas.
READ: Guiao: Serbia simply ‘too big, too good’ for Gilas
“We have never experience that before—being blown off the court in consecutive games,” he continued. “We’re a little frustrated. But we can’t dwell on that.
“We’re looking forward to our game against Angola,” he said. “We need to win that game and we need to work very hard for it.”
One thing that Lee has experienced in the World Cup before was Gilas also losing all of its games before playing an African team last in the group phase.
The Filipinos defeated Senegal in overtime in Seville, Spain in 2014, and that’s exactly the feeling he wants to relive Wednesday afternoon.