Salud wants 'working committee' for national cage program

MANILA, Philippines – PBA president Chito Salud is batting for the national cage federation and the pro league to put up a working committee that will study the most viable long-term and sustainable national team program.

“I think the concern is for the SBP and the PBA to sit down, get heads together, take the bull by the horn and move forward,” said Salud with the question of Gilas Pilipinas’ participation in the Olympic world qualifier next year up in the air.

The Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas said it would take the entire Philippine basketball community – its major stakeholders – to form a competitive team for that Olympic wildcard play.

SBP president Manny V. Pangilinan said they would vie if guaranteed of availability of all the players and the time needed to prepare for the tough competition.

The Philippines has only until October 18 to decide on its participation in the meet featuring France, Serbia, Greece, Italy, Czech Republic, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Angola, Tunisia, Senegal, Iran and Japan.

Salud is looking at a long-term plan that could allow Gilas Pilipinas to finally go all the way to the top following back-to-back second-place finishes in 2013 and 2015.

“We have clear choices before us. One, continue the pick-up system and be subject to the vagaries of either players or team owners’ decisions. Second, put up a cadet pool with proposed rules on recruitment, protection and reinforcement of players that the PBA can sign on,” said Salud.

“As we transition towards largely a cadet pool system, we can phase in and phase out the cadet and PBA players, in agreement again with PBA owners,” Salud added.

The PBA president said he’s proposing a system that has the best chance of reaching a consensus among the stakeholders.

He feels the best features of his proposal include longer preparation, a pool of younger players, coach Tab Baldwin’s system embedded in the game and PBA reinforcement.

“Coach Baldwin’s system allowed us to be within striking distance throughout despite our team not top of its game and our treys not connecting,” noted Salud.

“This only tells us a longer preparation which embeds the system in our players’ game puts our players in game shape and allows us to fine tune our skills specially shooting,” Salud said.

The SBP itself is looking at reviving its old Gilas cadet program to be reinforced by players from the MVP teams (Talk n Text, Meralco and NLEX).

But the concern is the Olympic world qualifier in July. And the federation has to make a decision on its participation or non-participation in the next eight days.