From Inquirer.net: Casio heriocs not enough
For the second time in 3 days, the well-funded Smart-Gilas lost a game in the 33rd William Jones Cup held in Taipei. First, they lost to Jordan and now to old nemesis, South Korea. I am sure a lot of people are asking if the country has what it takes to qualify for the 2012 Olympics. Is there hope? Probably, as the saying goes "bilog ang bola!".
Realistically though, our chance are very slim. Look at the progress of our Asian neighbors. The Middle Eastern teams have developed so fast that we have a hard time matching up with their size. The traditional powers like China and Korea are still there. It is nice of MVP (Manny V. Pangilinan) to fund Gilas but I think he knows as well that we need a lot of prayers for our team to top the olympic qualifiers. Where do we lack?
1. Size- The acquisition of Marcus Douhit somehow made the problem less visible but once he gets into foul trouble like he usually does, we are screwed. Who else do we have? Asi? The old-reliable Asi is simply too old to be effective in more than 15 minutes intense basketball. Greg Slaughter is more of a developmental center for now.
2. Player availability - Well, Jimmy Alapag and Kelly Williams were supposed to be with the team. Where are they? They are in the PBA Finals. They are paid to win the PBA grand slam above the Jones Cup. How can they become comfortable with their teammates if they are not with the team? It was too ambitious for Gilas to aim for 2012 Olympics. 2016 perhaps would have been a better goal and they should have locked in those young players for another 4 years. Lo and behold, the Gilas youngsters are joining the PBA Draft. Who do we have left then? Even the players I guess are moving to the pros sensing that there will be no 2012 games for the Gilas. Will these players even give it all in September to risk injury and lucrative PBA careers? I hope they do but there are still no guarantees.
3. Shooting - The Gilas is not the tallest team out there and to counter we must have amazing speed or sniper-like outside shooting. Gone are the days that the best shooter in Asia is from the Philippines (Caidic). JV Casio has potential but other than him, I cannot find someone really consistent in making those long range bombs. They have to make the opponents respect our shooting to open up the lanes. Maybe to encourage this, we should add new lines in our leagues and make the 3-point line into a 4 point line and the a feet or 2 below it will be the new 3 point line. Our young players are so fixated with dunks and fast breaks that they only realize how hard it is to dunk when facing world-class opposition. We can have the best screens in the game but without a reliable shooters, it will just be for naught.
It is hard to see the Philippines be disappointed again in the basketball court. I do not like seeing them lose but they have lost a lot in recent years and the voices that are saying that we shift to football are getting louder. I cannot blame them but if we shift to football, it will take us decades to just match where we are in basketball right now. It would be a sorry day when the Philippines will be beaten by the Thais, Malaysians, or Vietnamese in the basketball court. Basketball has the infrastructure already that even our football leaders want to emulate in the country. We just can't say stop playing basketball and start kicking soccer balls. We invested so much already. Hopefully those billions of pesos will not go to waste.
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