Gilas magpapakondisyon sa Cebu

MANILA, Philippines - Walong araw bago ang 2015 FIBA Asia Championship sa Changsa, China ay pipilitin ng Gilas Pilipinas na tutukan ang anumang bagay na magiging mahalaga sa kanilang kampanya.

Limang araw na mamamalagi ang Nationals sa Hoops Dome sa Cebu para plantsahin ang kanilang mga gagami-ting estratehiya bago sila magtungo sa Changsa, China sa Lunes.

Nakatakda ang 2015 FIBA Asia Championship sa Sept. 23 hanggang Oct. 3 at isa ang Gilas Pilipinas sa 16 koponang mag-aagawan para sa nag-iisang Olympic slot.

“I want to bring home the gold so that the people in this country will be thrilled watching their team in the Olympics next year. That’s what I want to do. Anything else is secondary,” wika ni Gilas coach Tab Baldwin sa pagtatapos ng kanilang 14 warm-up games para sa FIBA Asia.

Iginiit ni Baldwin na pinag-aaralan pa nila ang Asian Championship.

“This team is very, very new, very young team not in terms of age and experience but in terms of time together and training opportunities. And you can’t expect to have all the cohesion in the world and expect fluid basketball when that’s the case,” sabi ni Baldwin.

“So we’re not ready yet, but we still have a week of seclusion away from you people, I hope, and away from the public and we can get better in that environment,” dagdag pa nito.

Ito ay ang krusyal na linggo kung saan sinabi ni Baldwin na ang kanilang mga ensayo ay magiging “high energy to high intelligence.”

“One of the objectives now is to bring ourselves to peak readiness in terms of conditioning and that’s not mean killing them this week. It means tapering at the end of the week,” ani Baldwin.

Wala siyang alinlangan sa individual skills ng kanyang mga players ngunit ang paglalaro nila sa isang structured system ang kanyang iniisip.

Nangako si Baldwin na hindi sila magrerelaks at magiging kampante.

Idinagdag niyang marami pa silang kailangang gawin sa Cebu.

“We’re refining, we’ll be introducing some new stuffs. We introduced new stuffs during the MVP Cup and we’ll refine those,” ani Baldwin.