THE mood on the sixth floor of the Upper Deck Sports Center in Ortigas, Pasig, felt different the first time the Gilas Pilipinas national team training pool buckled down to work in five months last Monday night.
Excitement was reduced to anxiousness as only nine players showed up—and the practice became a mere exchange of pleasantries and video viewing.
That’s just fine for National coach Tim Cone, convinced they can hack it when the FIBA Asia Cup comes off the wraps next month in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
“We just met and talked about how we can organize. I feel really disorganized at this point. Not everybody’s here and I got guys who are playing the game of their lives last (Sunday) night. It’s just hard to get ourselves organized at this point. We will get organized as it goes along,” Cone said. “But right now, this was just the first step, a baby step of coming together of who was available. There was no real court time that we were planning.
“It was just really meeting, go over some video of our last games. We watched some video of our last games and then we’re discussing, we got a lot of the players who are ending the season and are very tired and worn out,” he added.
The likes of former PBA MVP Scottie Thompson, CJ Perez, Jamie Malonzo, Chris Newsome, RJ Abarrientos, Japeth Aguilar, Troy Rosario, Carl Tamayo, and Dwight Ramos were present.
Thompson, Malonzo, Aguilar, Rosario, and Abarrientos’ Ginebra side is set to battle San Miguel Beer, which has Perez in Game 7 of the Philippine Cup semifinals tonight at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.
Cone confirmed that Rosario and Abarrientos were added to the pool along with Magnolia rising star Zavier Lucero and Rhenz Abando.
“Troy is part of our long list. We added a couple of guys to our long list. We actually added Lucero but he’s in the States at the moment and we added Rhenz Abando but I think Rhenz is in Taiwan. But we needed to add a couple of guys on the list just to make sure,” Cone said. “The 12 we’re bringing is not written in stone. We could make some last-minute changes. But RJ’s certainly a candidate. Troy’s a candidate. We’ll see what happens as we move forward.
“But they’re here, they’re part of the long list that we have. Just in case something happens.”
Newsome, the Meralco star, is slated to marry long-time beau Cam Lagmay on Friday and perhaps the rest of his Philippine five teammates can attend the wedding but the moment their roster is complete, expect them to be laser-focused.
