NOW comes the hard part.
The Gilas Pilipinas national team training pool buckled down to work yesterday at the Inspire Sports Academy in Calamba, Laguna for the first window of the FIBA Asia Cup qualifiers next week.
Bannered by naturalized star Justin Brownlee, the likes of Scottie Thompson, Jamie Malonzo, Chris Newsome, Calvin Oftana, CJ Perez, June Mar Fajardo, Dwight Ramos, AJ Edu, Carl Tamayo, Kai Sotto, and Kevin Quiambao make up Cone’s 12-man roster.
Edu will miss the Nationals’ games in the opening round of the qualifiers due to a torn meniscus injury, while Fajardo and Perez did not attend the team’s first practice under new coach Tim Cone to rest after coming off a title win for San Miguel Beer in the PBA Commissioner’s Cup.
Ginebra big man Japeth Aguilar, although not in the pool, showed up in practice yesterday.
Cone is leaning on having less preparation time but less disruption.
“The more players you have, the more you have to teach, and the more you have to figure out who best fits,” Cone said on the Power and Play program hosted by former PBA Commissioner Noli Eala. “But that takes time and again, your stakeholders or guys paying those players to be part of what we’re doing daily.
“They are wondering what you are gonna do with our league, our team, so the difficulty arises,” he added.
Gilas will launch its bid on the road against Hong Kong on Feb. 22 and will battle Chinese Taipei three days later at the PhilSports Arena in Pasig.
The second round of the qualifiers is set for Nov. 21 and Nov. 24.
The Filipino cagers will also face a tall task–seemingly a Mission Impossible–to clinch a slot in the Paris Olympics in July.
The Philippines is bracketed with host and world No. 8 Latvia, and No. 23 Georgia in Group A in the Olympic qualifying tournament.
The 38th-ranked Gilas quintet must finish in the top two of its group to advance to the crossover semifinals against the top two of Group B, which includes No. 12 Brazil, No. 17 Montenegro, and No. 67 Cameroon.
The winners of the crossover semis will clash for the lone slot in the Olympics.
The OQT will be held through four tourneys simultaneously from July 2 to 7 in the cities of Piraeus, Riga, San Juan, and Valencia.
But Cone is confident his charges can hack it.
“This time we go with the 12, and obviously, there’s gonna be injuries, age factor, chemistry factor, preparations, and attitude factors, whatever,” he said.
“But the idea of getting the 12, and with minimum disruption, they know who they are.
There are no tryouts anymore (so we see) where it goes from there.”