Failed title defense has SBP searching for Asiad solutions
Adrian Nocum expressed his regret over how things ended for Gilas Pilipinas after the country’s worst finish in the men’s basketball competition of the Asian Games.
The country’s national federation is also feeling the pain and will begin looking for ways to address the debacle.
“Pasensiya na at hindi natin nakuha ang resultang inaasam natin (I am sorry that we weren’t able to achieve the result we desired),” Nocum wrote on social media as Gilas failed to make the quarterfinals after a 105-61 loss to China on Monday.
The loss exposed several flaws in the country’s buildup to the Asian Games.
The team was assembled as a replacement for the original Gilas Pilipinas roster that competed in the Fiba World Cup Asian qualifiers in August. Half of the players on that squad were not available due to other commitments or, in June Mar Fajardo’s case, retirement.
The Asian Games is not part of the Fiba calendar, which means players with club commitments abroad could not secure releases from their teams to join the national team.
The team was also without a naturalized player, a disadvantage that proved crucial against Bahrain, which fielded four naturalized standouts.
“Those are all complex problems that we need to fix,” said Erika Dy, the executive director of the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas. “We will sit down and look at everything, all the factors and figure out what we need to do.”
Dy acknowledged there will always be problems forming a team for tournaments like the Asian Games, which is not under the Fiba calendar. And while in the past, the PBA lending its players was the best possible way to form a team, that isn’t true now with several national team stars playing abroad.
And while the SBP is open to all solutions, including suggestions that the national federation subsidize the salaries of national players so they can play in the PBA, which offers a significantly lower package than other Asian leagues, Dy said the SBP will also look at more stable and realistic answers.
“We need to look at long-term solutions, and one of those is to strengthen our pool in the grassroots,” she said. “Other countries have very deep and talented pools that they can send different players for every tournament based on availability. We need to be able to do that.”
The all-PBA squad is set to fly home on Wednesday, likely still smarting from the early elimination.
“It hurts to see it happen. It also hurts for the players,” PBA commissioner Willie Marcial said in a POC Media Pool report.
“The Chinese players were too tall, plus they can also shoot from the outside,” Marcial said in Filipino. “There’s nothing that our players could do.”
While the men fly home, the other Gilas squads will hope to salvage some measure of pride for the country. Gilas Women plays its first match on Thursday against Kazakhstan as it aims to get out of Group B as a top-two finisher or as one of the two best third-placers.
The men’s and women’s 3×3 teams will open their campaign next week.
