It’s always morale-boosting to win over South Korea and Japan on the basketball court. Smart Gilas’ back-to-back victories over our rivals in the Jones Cup helped restore our confidence in Filipino hoops know-how.
Japan and more so South Korea have inflicted some painful losses on our national squad, whether in the Fiba Asia tournament or the Asian Games.
The Japanese and the Koreans have been our fiercest rivals long before China, the Middle East countries and a few former Russian territories started dominating the Asian scene.
Against Korea and Japan, Philippine teams don’t have to worry about size. There have been giants in the slot from these two countries through the years but none significant to remember. The Philippines against Japan or Korea is a shootout cum speed contest.
From the 1970s, many still remember the lethal Japanese combination of guard Shigeaki Abe and forward Masatomo Taniguchi and the sweet shooting Koreans like Shin Dong-pa.
We have paid the price quite often for underestimating their ability to can it from afar.
Long before we had Allan Caidic and now Jeff Chan and Gary David, the Koreans most especially, were already practicing and mastering sniping from the outside. Even the youngest Korean national teams always have one or two snipers.
Chot Reyes’ current team seems inclined to go in the direction of hitting from the perimeter as well.
The first option is no doubt to pass inside to Marcus Douthit for point blank attempts but once the traffic to the basket becomes congested, there is a need to toss the leather outside.
Chan, David, Gabe Norwood, Ranidel de Ocampo, Larry Fonacier and LA Tenorio are all capable of canning it from beyond the arc.
Against Japan, the three-point shot helped engineer a comeback for the Philippines that was down by as much 13 points.
Bringing up the defense forced Japanese turnovers and resulted in quick transition points. But the heavy bombing of David, Chan and Norwood helped close the gap much faster.
The Japanese looked too tuckered out to switch defensively after trying to bring the ball across safely to their side of the court. Filipino long bombers struck decisively to carve out an 88-84 come-from-behind triumph.
Long-time national coach Joe Lipa once told me that long range shooters will always have a slot on teams. And clearly so, college, semi-pro and pro teams that have outside assassins will have superb chances of winning games because they can score from long distance.
This helps neutralize any height advantage an opponent may have because there will be no rebound to talk about once the ball is in the hoop.
Of course, so much more has to be done to finally upend China and the other huge Asian teams. We will need more big men, naturalized or otherwise, to wage trench battles against them.
They also have long-range shooters because they’ve also learned that to win against heftier European or teams from the Americas, they need to score also from outside.
Let’s keep nurturing our shooters. If there are boys or girls in the hundreds of basketball camps and teams we have already shooting treys, let’s encourage them by teaching them the proper footwork and hand mechanics.
Let’s win grade school and high school games by creating shooters and not just slashers who can score easily.