THE busy year for Gilas Pilipinas should pose no problem for National coach Tim Cone.
For the PBA’s winningest tactician, it’s about mindset, like in the case of being excited for the coming stints of young and promising cagers Kevin Quiambao and Carl Tamayo in the FIBA Asia Cup in August.
“The whole point of getting them when they’re younger and having them mature through the process. So, we’ll see. I’m excited for it, but I got other things on my mind right now. I got Ginebra to think about,” Cone said.
“I’m a one plane at a time guy. I land one plane at a time. I don’t think you can when you’re landing, trying to train two or three planes and crash where you’ll be in trouble.
“So, my idea is I think about one thing at a time. Never right now, but I have an eye out for the age to come,” he added.
With prized center Kai Sotto out due to an ACL injury, Cone is pinning his hopes on naturalized star Justin Brownlee, Quiambao, and Tamayo to step up in the Aug. 5-17 tourney known formerly as the ABC Championship and FIBA Asia Championship.
Cone’s wards are bracketed in Group D along with New Zealand, Chinese Taipei, and Iraq.
“That’s going to be our goal. Playing better than we did last time, that’s for sure and I think we’ll be ready. Justin’s eager to come back. He’s working and I know that Carl and Kevin and I think everybody’s real excited to get back into it,” Cone said.
“I think it’s reasonable expectations also to think that Kevin and Carl will be bigger players in what we do. I think they’re showing growth and it’s reasonable to expect them to be a bigger, bigger contributors.”
While admitting the Tall Blacks and the Chinese will come in handy, Cone is unfazed.
“We’ve got to finish in the top two or at least get to the highest quotient in third place to advance. But the goal is to sweep the group stage and it’s going to be hard because it’s against New Zealand,” he said. “We’ve lost back-to-back games to New Zealand and Chinese Taipei already. So, obviously, we’ve got to be better.
“Now that we know Taiwan and now that we know New Zealand and we played them a couple times, I think it’s reasonable for us to think that we can play them better this time around.”
Only after the Asia Cup will Cone shift his sights on the first round of the World Cup Asian qualifiers later this year.
