‘Different’ Gilas team to defend gold that matters in SEA Games

Gilas Pilipinas ahead of its match up against 2025 Fiba Asia Cup qualifiers. –FIBA PHOTO

Gilas Pilipinas may look a little different when it defends the gold medal in the Southeast Asian Games (SEAG) this December, the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas (SBP) said on Friday.

“The plan we have at this moment—which I don’t want to reveal yet right now, because we haven’t really solidified it—is that it won’t be the same team,” executive director Erika Dy told reporters on the sidelines of the federation’s National Congress held at Meralco compound in Ortigas.

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“But again, there’s no solid plan, so things can change and for the better, or for the worse. We don’t know yet,” she went on. “We also want to give a chance for the next generation to be able to compete internationally at an elite level.”

The SEA Games is slated for Dec. 7-19 and will run smack in the middle of the first tournament of the PBA, which by then will be celebrating its 50th season.

The regional showcase is also projected to run in conflict with the schedule of the UAAP and the local NCAA, which further constricts the talent pipeline from which the SBP and the Gilas brain trust could draw talents from.

Further complicating things is that the PBA and the varsity leagues aren’t obligated to adjust their schedules, as the SEA Games isn’t governed by Fiba, reducing the pressure to align their calendars.

The current National Five led by June Mar Fajardo, Scottie Thompson, Dwight Ramos, Kai Sotto and Justin Brownlee has eight players in the PBA. The others are currently in either Japan or South Korea, whose respective leagues also play around Fiba events only.

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The last Gilas squad the SBP sent in the 2023 edition of the SEA Games in Cambodia featured nine PBA stars and three UAAP standouts. That crew, then coached by Chot Reyes, put the Philippines back on top of the tournament—but not after a big scare—after a disastrous campaign in Vietnam the year before.

Reyes said shortly after the triumph that “it really has to be our younger players who should be playing here,” which echoes what Dy highlighted on Friday.

Still, Dy is steadfast in her belief that the SBP, with the help of its stakeholders, can come up with a solution to assemble the best possible team to keep the Philippines, a 19-time champion, on top of the totem pole.

“We have no concrete plans yet, because there’s a lot of suggestions that we really need to study well to be able to form a formidable team for this [coming] SEA Games,” she said.