NOT even a shadow of doubt crossed the mind of Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas President Al Panlilio in choosing a permanent coach for Gilas Pilipinas–Tim Cone has it takes.
“Hands down for me, Tim Cone has proven himself many times over,” Panlilio said last Monday during the SBP’s send-off for Gilas at the PhilSports Arena in Pasig. “That Asian Games medal was delivered by Tim. To me, there’s no other choice except to really offer it to Tim.
“If Tim said no, that was the (only) time that I would start looking at other coaches,” he added.
Panlilio said Cone and SBP are on the same page when it comes to their vision for the Nationals to qualify for the FIBA World Cup in Qatar in 2027 and clinch a historic slot in this year’s Paris Olympics or in the LA Games in 2028.
“I know Tim will say that any other coach will have a different line-up. But in his system, and the way he wants to run the program, this is the 12 that he is looking at to deliver that vision. We started with that, and I sort of agreed with a lot of things that Tim said and the targets that we wanted to put forward,” Panlilio said. “We were aligned from Day One in terms of the vision. Took a bit of time for me to convince him to say yes but we were sort of aligned.
“We wanted to improve the standings of the Philippines. Once you perform internationally, the rankings follow. I told Tim, why can’t we be in the top 20 at some point. I know it’s a hard task. But we want to be better.”
The Filipino cagers left the country yesterday for Hong Kong and will launch their bid on the road against the hosts tomorrow.
Gilas will tackle Chinese Taipei on Sunday at the PhilSports Arena in Pasig.
The second round of the qualifiers is set for Nov. 21 and Nov. 24.
The PBA’s winningest tactician with 25 titles and two grand slams, Cone tapped the likes of naturalized star Justin Brownlee, former MVP Scottie Thompson, CJ Perez, Jamie Malonzo, Chris Newsome, Calvin Oftana, Dwight Ramos, Carl Tamayo, Kai Sotto, and Kevin Quiambao along with injured big men June Mar Fajardo and AJ Edu as members of his 12-man national team training pool.
The pool is set to train for the next four years.
Panlilio is confident Cone can steer the Philippine five to new heights.
“We want to improve every time. If you talk about the World Cup, we qualified in the last three. . . We want to qualify again for the next World Cup, but we want to do better. My aspiration in the last World Cup was at least two wins but we felt short. We haven’t had two wins in the World Cup,” he said. “If you notice, in the top 16, there was no Asian team. We are all at the bottom. Maybe we can do better than that next time. A lot of this vision and this aspiration was due to the discussions with Tim.
“I also have to understand how Tim is thinking about the whole process and he did say that we always want to be the best in Southeast Asia for sure, and we always want to be the top team in Asia. We started that with the Asian gold last year and we carry that for the next four years.”
