CONTINUITY over diversity.
Gilas Pilipinas coach Tim Cone is not keen on adding players to his 12-man roster for future international tourneys leading to their bid for the FIBA World Cup in 2027 in Qatar and in the Los Angeles Olympics four years from now.
“To be honest, absolutely not (hot on the idea of extending his pool) because of the short preparation time we have, the teaching part of the team is much harder when you have a big pool,” Cone said. “If you have 18 guys on your team, you have to teach all 18 of your system.
“It gets very unwieldy and difficult to do that especially if you are only talking about 10 days or seven days,” he added.
Cone said having time–or lack of it–to teach his charges his bread-and-butter triangle offense will simply not hack it if they want to achieve their goals.
“If you’ve got a whole season, a whole year to teach 18 guys, you can teach 18 easily over a period of time. But with short preparation time, it’s like if you are going to teach five people how to do something, you can do it quickly,” Cone said. “But if you are going to teach 25 people to do something, it takes a longer time to teach all 25. That’s an exaggeration. But that is what the program is all about. That’s why we try to go with a tight, smaller pool because the teaching is less, and it has to be because the preparation time is less.”
Since Cone took over at the helm of the Philippine five last year, Gilas ruled the Asian Games cage tilt for the first time since 1962 and completed a two-game sweep of the first window of the Asia Cup qualifiers last February.
The Nationals also fell two wins shy of a Paris Games slot after a surprise semifinals stint in the Olympic qualifying tournament in Riga earlier this month.
Going with the same line-up bannered by naturalized star Justin Brownlee, reigning seven-time PBA MVP June Mar Fajardo, former winner Scottie Thompson, 7-foot-3 Kai Sotto, Dwight Ramos, and Chris Newsome should be fine, according to Cone.
“That’s basically the challenge. If you bring somebody on the team, somebody has to be removed. Right now, the chemistry is strong. These are really, really difficult decisions,” he said. “But really, we will try to stick to the 12 because we already have a history with the 12. We have preparation with those 12. Like we keep on saying, it’s cumulative. Every time we bring in someone new, we have to start from this point and go forward.
“All in the past won’t mean much if we continue to change players. We want to keep the players as we can as we are accumulating experiences together.”
