Baldwin eyes stable roster of Philippines players

MANILA, Philippines - Coach Tab Baldwin hopes for a stable pool of players for Gilas Pilipinas, saying this is a crucial part of a program that could sustain the Philippines’ rise in international basketball.

“The important thing for me is that the team continues to play close to its potential each time we assemble, and continues to improve, as a unit, over the long term,” said Baldwin.

“Of course, this can only be expected if we are to have reasonable stability in our roster selection,” Baldwin also said on his thoughts on the Philippines’ improvement to 28th place in the world and No. 3 in FIBA Asia ranking.

“That’s nice to see although I don’t believe the rankings accurately reflect the current strength of the countries, and frankly, it’s not meant to,” he pointed out.

With a stable pool, Baldwin believes the Philippines can form a team that can improve on its second-place finishes in the FIBA Asia Championship in 2013 and in 2015.

A stable pool is SBP’s wish if they’re to participate in the Olympic world qualifier in July, next year.

SBP president Manny V. Pangilinan and his group have until Oct. 18 to decide if the Philippines is competing or not in the Olympic wild card play to be participated in by strong teams such as France, Serbia, Greece, Italy, Czech Republic, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Angola, Tunisia, Senegal, Iran and Japan.

PBA president Chito Salud is proposing a long-term plan.

“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 in the next seven days  on whether it should consider participating or not.