|
A new era of Gilas Pilipinas Men was formally ushered in on Monday with a new program, new team and new permanent head coach that will hopefully achieve the ambitious goals of returning to the Olympics and becoming the best team in Asia. After years of a revolving door of players and coaches, the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas (SBP) has chosen stability and continuity by drafting a four-year program, appointing a head coach who will handle the team for that time period, and naming the 12 players who will form the team, effectively discarding the old process of naming a new pool of players every time a new tournament rolls around. Having qualified for the past three FIBA World Cups, SBP president Al Panlilio believes the Gilas program is primed to take the next step. "If you talk about the World Cup, we qualified for the last three," Panlilio said. "We want to qualify again for the next World Cup. But we want to do better. I think my aspiration in the last World Cup was at least two wins. We fell short. "We have not had two wins in the World Cup. And if you notice, there are 32 teams. In the top 16, there was no Asian or African team. We're all in the bottom 16. So maybe we can do better than that next time." Tasked to oversee this vision is Tim Cone, the most successful coach in PBA history who was formally appointed last month. Cone has since named the 12 players who will carry out the four-year mission, and on Tuesday they all gathered for their first public practice in preparation for their first major test: the first qualifying window of the FIBA Asia Cup 2025 where Gilas will face Hong Kong on Thursday and Chinese Taipei on Sunday. "I feel like I'm a caretaker of something very sacred, being the head coach of Gilas," said Cone. And it's something that I grew up with, I've seen and I've witnessed, I've been a part of it in the past. I've watched it from '98 all the way through the years. And I'm excited to be a part of it. "And like Mr. Panlilio said, we have a vision. Now it's all about the process of how we get there. "Today's practice is going to be as important as the practice three years from now when we prepare for the World Cup. Everything is going to be important and precious to us because we do have limited time. Everything we do is, it has a purpose. And that's what we're really trying to impress on the players." For Panlilio, Cone was the only choice to head this rebooted Gilas program, especially after he steered the Philippines to its first Asian Games men's basketball gold medal in 61 years last year. "There was no other choice except to really offer it to Tim," he explained. "If Tim said no, then that was the time I would start looking for other coaches. "There were some thinking of foreign coaches. But, again, it's difficult. I mean, you're hiring a foreign coach, but you only need him, as Tim said, maybe 14 days of the year. So what does he do the rest of the year?" Panlilio revealed that it took a while to convince Cone to get onboard, given it's a four-year commitment. But once he did, it was his vision that was adopted. That included doing away with picking a new pool of players every so often and simply choosing 12 best suited for Cone's system. "We're trying to gather the best players in Philippine basketball," Panlilio continued. "And our thinking is, you know, depending on the system of Tim, is this 12 players that we're going to try. I know Tim will say that any other coach can get a different lineup. "But for him, I think in his system, the way he wants to run the program, these are the 12 that he's looking at to deliver. So we started from that. "And I sort of agreed with a lot of the things that Tim said and the targets that we set. We wanted to move forward. So we were aligned, actually, from day one in terms of the vision. We wanted to improve the standings of the Philippines. Once you perform internationally, the ranking's part of the money. "So I told Tim, why can't we be in the top 20 at some point? I know it's a hard task because you're playing against a lot of European countries at the same time. We want to be better. We want to improve every year. What number we fall at, I really don't know. But we want to continue to improve." For Cone, having ended a 61-year Asian Games gold medal drought, the next major goal is to end another long wait. Philippines hasn't played at the Olympics since the 1972 Munich Games, and this is his new challenge. "Well, I've said this before. I think I said it during the Asian Games Our goal is, in my mind, to make it to the Olympics," Cone declared. "And whether it be Paris or whether it be L.A. in four years, our goal is to make it to the Olympics. "And we do that by either qualifying in Latvia (in July at the Olympic Qualifying Tournament) or by being the best Asian team in the (2027) World Cup. "To do that, we have to qualify for the World Cup. And to do that, we have to qualify for the FIBA Asia (Cup). It's all a progression that goes forward. So that's our goal. Our goal is to do that. But that's not our focus. We're not going to be thinking about that, or talking about that as a group. "Our focus is what it's going to take to get us there. And that's that day-to-day process that we're going to battle. This window here is part of the process. That's going to take us forward. And get us advanced. And right now, we're just trying to build a foundation."
|
