GILAS Pilipinas coach Tim Cone pondered long and hard on what went wrong in their campaign that ended on a sad note in the FIBA Asia Cup last week.
It all boiled down to a slew of the same old problems—not enough time to toughen up and financial woes.
“I would have loved to have more time and those two weeks in terms of preparations? Three of those days only we had a full team practice,” Cone said over the weekend on the Power and Play program of former PBA Commissioner Noli Eala. “We only had seven or eight guys, and two of whom didn’t make the final 12.
“These are things that are personally out of my control. We have certain parameters from which we can work, and we’re trying to do the best within those parameters,” he added.
Cone only got to call the shots for the Filipino cagers’ practices full-time after July 9 when his Ginebra quintet was sent packing by eventual champion San Miguel Beer in the semifinals of the season-ending Philippine Cup.
While Gilas reached the quarterfinal of the prestigious continental tilt in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, it was bamboozled by fancied Australia that stretched the Philippine five’s title drought to 41 long and gloomy years.
Cone said he can only do so much.
“Our (PBA) season goes 11 months of the year. Again, if you want to change the whole culture, I would be great with that. But again, these are the parameters which we have,” Cone said. “It’s not only time constraints. It’s also budgetary. We don’t have a massive budget. There are certain constraints that we don’t have any control over.
“I am not the program director, I’m just a coach, and I’m not given that power. By being the coach, you work with the parameters that we are given.”
With fellow multi-titled strategist Norman Black tapped to handle Gilas in its title defense in the 33rd Southeast Asian Games in December in Thailand, Cone has the first round of the World Cup Asian qualifiers in November and the following month—an away and home tiff both against Guam—as his remaining assignments for the year.
Cone will surely roll with the punches and weave his magic—no matter how tall the odds are.
“The bottom line is, I can’t change that,” he said. “I can’t worry about what I can’t control.”
