THERE are lots of moving parts and while Gilas Pilipinas absorbed vitriols from naysayers and unbelievers over the team’s recent string of losses, National coach Tim Cone stood firm—they can only get better.
He will not add players to the national team training pool, for now.
“We came in with a program and we’re going to stick to that program as much as we can. We’re not going to be too hard-headed about it, or I guess that’s the way I’m being described at this point, being hard-headed,” Cone said. “We suffered some failure at this point. Hopefully, you know, we can learn from it.
“You don’t learn from success; you learn from failure. I think that what we said from the very beginning, we’re not going to win all the time. We’re not going to be great all the time. That’s just an impossible thing to do. But we can be better than what we were. That’s for darn sure,” he said.
Without towering 7-foot-3 center Kai Sotto, the Nationals stumbled to a 1-2 card in the Doha International Friendly Basketball Championship.
The Filipino cagers fashioned a come-from-behind 74-71 victory over Qatar in their opening match before yielding to Lebanon (54-75) and Egypt (55-86).
Then, Gilas absorbed two straight losses in the third and final window of the FIBA Asia Cup qualifiers to Chinese Taipei 84-91 and to New Zealand 70-87 last week.
The Philippine five finished with a 4-2 record, good enough to advance to the Asia Cup set in August in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Armchair pundits are up in arms, suggesting Cone and the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas field other players to the pool.
It’s not as easy as A-B-C.
“There are so many things beyond what people are talking about. It’s not just that easy to pull somebody out or, you know, add to the pool or get a bigger pool,” Cone said.
“There are finances involved. There’s budget. There’s extra travel time. There’s more practice time. It’s not as simple as just saying, okay, now we’re going to go to 15, 18, or 20 people. It’s not that simple.”
Cone has six months to whip his wards back to their fiery form and vowed to redeem themselves.
“We can be better than what we were. So, at this point, no. We’re not going to add to the pool. We’re not going to subtract from the pool unless there’s guys out there that don’t want to join us anymore,” he said. “But as long as these guys want to continue to play and represent, we’re going to let them represent. People are going to get angry about it.
“They’re going to get angry at me about it, I guess that’s the bottom line. But we came in with a program. We came in with an idea and we’re not going to change it at first panic. We’ll see what happens. Let’s take another chance.”
