MORE than ever, Gilas Pilipinas needs to be united–and not disrupt the PBA and other leagues where the team is getting its players– in its bid for the Olympic qualifying tournament set July 2 to 7 in Latvia, according to coach Tim Cone.
“One of the things that we were looking at again was number one, if we’re going to be successful, we must have everybody all in. We can’t be competing with one organization to another, we really had to be all in on this for us to have success,” Cone said. “Number two, I don’t know how to put it, but we don’t want to disrupt other teams. I mean other leagues. We don’t want to disrupt the PBA and the UAAP because in the beginning they’ll say ‘yeah, you know, we’ll support you.’
“But if you’re hurting them and disrupting their leagues or disrupting their teams then eventually, they’re going to slowly but surely pull away and we’ve seen that over the years,” he added.
Naturalized star Justin Brownlee leads Cone’s crew, along with reigning seven-time MVP June Mar Fajardo and former winner Scottie Thompson, Chris Newsome, Calvin Oftana, CJ Perez, Dwight Ramos, AJ Edu, Carl Tamayo, Kai Sotto, and Kevin Quiambao, and alternates Japeth Aguilar and Mason Amos.
With 6-foot-7 forward Jamie Malonzo out for the OQT due to a recent calf injury operation, Cone is looking to field either Aguilar or Amos as replacement.
The No. 37-ranked Philippine five 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 collide for the lone berth in the Olympics set in the French capital.
Cone’s move to form a permanent 12-man line-up for Gilas in international tilts should balance things out for the Filipino dribblers’ build-up without disrupting major cage leagues.
“We tried to design the program in a way in which we wouldn’t be so disruptive. We have a smaller window in terms of preparations and that was really one of the key things that I felt brought everyone together that we know we weren’t going to come out there and be ‘hey we’re the national team you follow us,’” Cone said.
“We want all your support, you know carte blanche and no, we went out there with an idea–we’re going to do this in an agreement with you so, you know we want your full support.”
Cone is convinced the sacrifice from the players and the stakeholders will also spell the big difference.
“We understand if we’re going to get your full support then we have to sacrifice something ourselves as well as you are so and they’ve done it, they’ve done a tremendous job of sacrificing,” he said.
“The PBA has bent over backwards trying to get our schedules into its league and the PBA players are, you know, incredibly excited to be playing in this thing.”
