Garcia troubled with opposition to Douthit’s inclusion in Gilas

INCHEON, South Korea – The Philippines' chef de mission to the 17th Asian Games Richie Garcia was caught by surprise with the latest issue hounding Gilas Pilipinas ahead of the manager's meeting on Friday.

A report came out on Thursday that Marcus Douthit is not yet 100 percent sure to suit up for Gilas as other teams may question the legitimacy of the process that enabled him to replace Andray Blatche, who was ruled to be ineligible due to the three-year residency rule by the Olympic Council of Asia.

"Well, I don't know where that thing came from. I feel bad because it came out from the Secretariat's office. I really don't know [where it came from] because I understand and I'm sure that the eligibility problem of (Andray) Blatche was (already) resolved that he cannot play,” Garcia told Filipino reporters in an ambush interview after the flag-raising ceremony in the Athletes Village here that officially kicked off the Phl's Asiad campaign.

“In the meeting, we submitted the name of Marcus as a replacement, which they accepted and together with that, (Jimmy) Alapag was also accepted as a replacement of another athlete (Jayson Castro) without even putting the other athlete as injured," he added.

Garcia insisted that nobody questioned the two replacements of Gilas during the meeting that happened last week.

"So if there was any concern to the eligibility process of replacing Blatche with Douthit, it should have been brought up in that meeting," Garcia said. "There was none."

Douthit, who signed a one-year extension to play for Gilas, is racing against time to get back in shape after getting sidelined in favor of Blatche during the 2014 FIBA World Cup in Spain last month.

As far as Garcia is concerned, Douthit is already part of the 12-man Asiad lineup which is also composed of Alapag, Paul Lee, Jeff Chan, Gabe Norwood, Gary David, LA Tenorio, Marc Pingris, Ranidel de Ocampo, Jared Dillinger, Japeth Aguilar and June Mar Fajardo.

"The issue is not existing and I don't know why people start to say that they might complain. But it was never brought up so I just leave it at that and that's already the responsibility of the team manager to answer that in the meeting if ever that is brought up," Garcia added.

Gilas team manager Aboy Castro arrived here last Wednesday to attend Friday's meeting.

The whole Gilas team will arrive on Saturday. They will play their first game on Tuesday against the Group B topnotcher in the qualification phase, which is expected to be Kazakhstan, before the much-awaited clash with FIBA Asia champion Iran on Thursday.