Gilas bids to play in PBA

No less than PBA chairman Ramon Segismundo is backing Gilas’ bid to play as the 11th team in the Governors Cup slated to start in early May. SBP executive director Sonny Barrios hopes it happens, too. And Gilas national coach Chot Reyes would be ecstatic if the PBA Board of Governors agrees.

The PBA Board has actually bent over backwards in adjusting the season schedule to allow more training time for Gilas. Originally, the 39th season would’ve ended sometime the third week of August, leaving barely a month for Gilas to prepare for the FIBA World Cup in Spain on Aug. 30-Sept. 14. To accommodate Gilas, the PBA Board reduced the finals of both the Commissioner’s and Governors Cup from best-of-seven to best-of-five, shortened the rest periods in between conferences and compressed the elimination schedules. For the ongoing Commissioner’s Cup, for instance, four elimination doubleheaders are calendared on a Saturday, usually not a playing day.

Additionally, the PBA Board gave Reyes blanket authority to choose any player from any team to add to the Gilas pool. Reyes took the cue and enlisted Rain Or Shine’s Paul Lee, Meralco’s Jared Dillinger, Barangay Ginebra’s Greg Slaughter and San Miguel Beer’s Marcio Lassiter to bring up the cast to 17. The pool includes the 12 who played at the FIBA-Asia Championships and reserve Beau Belga of Rain Or Shine but excludes Brooklyn Nets center Andray Blatche whose naturalization is now on third reading in Congress.  Subsequently, Slaughter and Lassiter begged off citing valid reasons.

Reyes said he’s not replacing Slaughter and Lassiter in the pool. He’ll stick with 15 plus Blatche. FIBA has set a deadline of July 15 for the World Cup teams to submit their 24-man lineups. The rosters will later be trimmed to 12. Reyes said he will fill the 24-man cast with cadet players Kevin Alas, Garvo Lanete, Matt Ganuelas and Jake and Ronald Pascual. There will still be slots to fill up after the five cadet cagers are named. The final 12 can only come from the initial 24. A day before the tournament at the managers meeting, changes may be made on the final 12 but only from the initial 24 at a hefty fine of $3,200 for each switch.

If the Governors Cup begins in the first week of May, it will end July 13 at the earliest but may extend to July 20. Reyes will probably want to give the Gilas players a two-week break before calling them to camp so that leaves about three weeks of training the complete squad for the Philippines’ return to the World Cup after a wait of 36 years.

To be fair to Gilas, Reyes should be given at least two months to train the national team for FIBA’s biggest tournament. The US will begin training in July and Korea starts next month. National pride is at stake in Spain. What every Filipino is praying for is a fighting chance. Gilas should go to war armed for battle, not doubting itself because of lack of training time. This is a chance of a lifetime and it will never happen again because starting in 2019, the FIBA World Cup will introduce a new qualifying format where Asia is bracketed with Oceania.

The PBA must realize this golden opportunity to play on the global stage came providentially. Manila wasn’t supposed to host the last FIBA-Asia Championships but Beirut was struck out because of civil unrest and the Philippines celebrated those 11 days in August like Gilas won the gold medal. Gilas worked so hard to regain prominence as an Asian power and now that Spain beckons, everyone in the Philippine basketball community must close ranks to support the national team to the fullest extent.

Allowing Gilas to play in the Governors Cup will mean training the national team and playing as a unit starting in May. That will give Reyes over three months of whipping the squad into fighting form. Reyes said TV5 will commit to air the games live on a daily basis. Of course, there are kinks to iron out like the height limit for imports or how to address the issue of a Gilas player going up against his mother team.

But as you and I know, if there’s a will, there’s a way. If you want it done, “may paraan” but if you don’t want it done, “may dahilan.” If the PBA Board is sincere in giving all-out support for Gilas, the Governors should confer with Reyes in drawing up a workable format to fit everyone’s goals in a season-ending third conference.

Rain Or Shine coach Yeng Guiao said it would be awkward for a Gilas player to play against his mother team. It would be like his mother team paying the salary of its own player to win over that mother team. But Reyes said he’s more than willing to sit out the concerned players when Gilas faces their mother team. So when Gilas battles Rain Or Shine, Reyes will bench Jeff Chan, Belga, Lee and Gabe Norwood.

As for the import ceiling, perhaps the top four finishers of the Commissioner’s Cup could be allowed up to 6-5 and the rest up to 6-9. Or the PBA teams could be allowed to recruit two imports, one 6-5 and the other 6-9 – that should sufficiently cover the gaps of Talk ‘N’ Text, Rain Or Shine and Barangay Ginebra all of which are contributing at least two players to the pool. The idea isn’t to hand the Governors Cup trophy on a silver platter to Gilas – that would defeat the purpose of toughening the national squad for Spain.

Will the PBA agree to play FIBA rules? Why not? If the premise is all-out support, the PBA shouldn’t make itself a hindrance. If Gilas’ bid to play in the Governors Cup is ruled out and the national team fares poorly in the World Cup, everyone will wonder what if? Let’s not leave anything to chance. Let’s not regret not doing what we can now to support Gilas.

In 1985-86, the Philippines qualified to play at the FIBA World Cup in Spain by winning the FIBA-Asia title with coach Ron Jacobs and stalwarts like Samboy Lim, Allan Caidic and Hector Calma. But the national team never got to play in Spain because the EDSA Revolution of 1986 made it irrelevant. Now, nearly 30 years later, the Philippines gets another chance to play at the FIBA World Cup, also in Spain – how coincidental is that?

This is fate repaying the Philippines and giving every Filipino a chance to enjoy what could be the country’s last dance in the World Cup. Let’s not throw away the opportunity to put Gilas in a position where the national team is fully prepared to compete with pride for the Philippines.