The national program has unveiled such unpolished gems as RJ Abarrientos (middle)and the challenge willbe to keep the pool intact until the 2023 World Cup.—PHOTO COURTESY OF FIBA
The country’s national program has assembled promising building blocks. A young Gilas Pilipinas has been exposed to high-level continental competition and has performed beyond expectations.
The pool, teeming size and potential, will get to continue its education against top-flight teams in an Olympic qualifier.
All that might be the easy phase in the journey to the 2023 Fiba (International Basketball Federation) World Cup.
The challenge, national team coach and program director Tab Baldwin said, will be getting stakeholders to pitch in to the project.
“We have to be prepared to dance a little bit, we have to be prepared to experience some disappointment, and have plan Bs ready to go when it’s necessary,” Baldwin said late Wednesday.
The current crop of Gilas Pilipinas players got off to a good start in terms of preparing for the World Cup, which the country will cohost. The Philippines swept its way to the Fiba Asia Cup, notching spectacular victories against rival South Korea in the process. And several past national coaches remain high on the batch of youngsters who have the kind of size past Philippine teams never had before.
But this brand of optimism isn’t new. It was the same one that surfaced in 2010, with the initial batch of Gilas Pilipinas youngsters. Three years later, that team was replaced by a squad of pros which eventually qualified for the World Cup.
The current crop features little safeguards that players won’t have other preoccupations, among them their collegiate commitments and their future pro plans.
“You know as well as I do that there is so many vested interests here in the Philippines in terms of basketball that it’s very difficult to get players to be allowed to commit to only one element of the basketball landscape—whether that be the national team, the PBA, the UAAP (University Athletic Association of the Philippines), the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association), even UAAP high school,” Baldwin said.
Commitments
While the 6-foot-10 Ange Kouame is a lock to remain in the program, there are others who have commitments elsewhere. Kai Sotto, the 7-foot-3 teenager, is signed with an Australian pro club. Another big man prospect, AJ Edu, is currently playing in the US NCAA. Several members of the club are PBA draftees, although the country’s pro league has allowed those players to focus on the national team. And then there are other pool targets, like Thirdy Ravena, Juan Gomez de Liaño and Kobe Paras, who are plying their trade overseas. That’s not even discounting the interest that breakout stars of the national pool, like Dwight Ramos, are generating from pro squads.
This is something the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas (SBP), the country’s national federation, needs to work on.
“That is the job of the SBP—to go out there and work to build relationships for the best of basketball nationwide and all of the interests that are working in parallel times here in the country,” Baldwin said.
But it is a problem that can also be solved easily.“I think as long as everybody wants to see the national team do well and as long as we are having some success, I think that everybody will be more inclined to assist the national program,” said Baldwin.
“But you have to remember that every PBA team wants to win, every UAAP and NCAA team wants to win,” he added. “We are sharing some of the best players so we have to be considerate of their goals and their aspirations.”
In the end, he said, “We hope that when the time comes, they will be considerate of the national team.” INQ