COACH Chris Gavina doesn’t believe in tinkering with anything that’s not broken and he carries that philosophy with him to Rain or Shine.
Gavina yesterday said no major overhaul is needed, adding he has been doing just some minor tweaking as the Elasto Painters prepare for the coming PBA season.
“I don’t really have to lay out a whole new system,” said the man appointed to take over from former head coach Caloy Garcia early last month.
“I’ve always felt like ‘yung sistema ni coach Caloy has brought great success here,” added Gavina. “Konting fine-tuning lang talaga.”
The former head coach at Kia/Mahindra in 2016 and the Bacoor Strikers in the MPBL the last two years has been in a great position to make such an assessment.
Gavina served as an assistant to Garcia since 2018 and was named to the helm mainly due to the latter’s projected busy tenure as one of Tab Baldwin’s assistants in the Gilas Pilipinas program.
Garcia is not leaving the E-Painters, staying on as an active consultant and head of the franchise’s basketball operations.
Garcia’s imprint would also remain visible in Rain or Shine’s game, stressed Gavina.
“Defensively, obviously, we were one of the best defensive teams in the bubble, last conference, and we’re looking to improve upon that,” said Gavina. “Offensively, we’d still
maintain ‘yung selfless style of offensive philosophy namin.”
There’s still room for improvement, though.
“Parang tweak the little details that we want to improve on, statistically,” said Gavina.
“I think we were last in fastbreak points the last time and we had an extremely low three-point field goal percentage. We also have the lowest amount of points scored, about 80 points per game,” he added.
“So those are the things we’re addressing as a coaching staff, the stats that we will be looking to improve on in the coming conference.”
To hit those goals, the E-Painters traded for Bradwyn Guinto and took in Leonard “Santi” Santillan, Franky Johnson, Anton Asistio and Andrei Caracut from last month’s rookie draft to form a team that has a solid core in veterans James Yap, Gabe Norwood and Beau Belga, as well as its Youth Brigade led by Rey Nambatac and Jayvee Mocon .
“I just feel that we can get more with our younger players that are great at attacking the basket. So we’re looking to be up tempo a little bit more,” said Gavina.
