Four well-known foreign basketball coaches are coming to share their expertise in the second World Hoops Clinic that Ateneo UAAP champion mentor Tab Baldwin is organizing with a focus on the European style at the New Life Christian Academy gym in BGC Taguig on June 1-3.
Baldwin, 60, set up the first World Hoops Clinic that featured Serbia’s Nenad Vucinic, New Zealand’s Pero Cameron, Spain’s Natxo Lezcano, Alaska’s Alex Compton and Alab’s Jimmy Alapag at the Marikina Sports Center last year. Over 200 participants attended the 3-day sessions. Baldwin said the second edition will be bigger and better.
This year, Baldwin is expecting at least 350 to sign up and from all indications, the turnout could be close to the gym capacity of 450. The first 300 to register will receive a gift pack that includes giveaways from sponsors Smart Communications, Unilab, the Meralco Bolts, Ignite Property Holdings, Bounty Fresh Chicken and Uratex Beds. The clinic cost is P7,500 for each participant. All clinic details are available on the World Hoops Clinic Facebook page “World Hoops Clinic” or on the WHC Instagram account “whc.tab.”
Baldwin’s roster of speakers lists former Italian A1 and Greek league Coach of the Year Andrea Mazzon of Italy, New Zealand national team head coach Paul Henare, Turkish national team assistant coach Ertugrul Erdogan, former Qatar national team head coach Vasilis Fragkias of Greece, Meralco head coach Norman Black, Lyceum head coach Topex Robinson and Baldwin himself as clinic director.
Among the topics to be discussed are transition offense and defense to building a man-to-man defensive system, multiple methods of defending the pick-and-roll and a presentation of offensive plays for special situations. The foreign visitors will divulge their secrets to success in the EuroLeague and international competitions with an emphasis on teaching, discipline and player development.
“There are many very good coaches in the Philippines at the elite level but I believe that in the junior levels, there is far too much emphasis on winning rather than on development,” said Baldwin. “Therefore, we have too many high-level players who use sheer physical talent and skill to compete but lack the nuanced understanding of the game that is present in so many European players who are part of a system that generally emphasizes development over winning in its young players.”
Baldwin said the exposure to the European approach will open a new dimension of playing the game for coaches attending the second World Hoops Clinic. Coaches from all over the Philippines and throughout the Southeast Asian region are invited to learn from the experts.
Mazzon, 52, is an Italian basketball icon who was an assistant coach in the NBA D-League and head coach in China, Russia and Greece with Aris of Thessaloniki. Henare, 39, played from 1995 to 2014 and is now at the helm of the New Zealand program. Erdogan, 49, is the head coach of Istanbul BBSK in the Turkish league and former EuroLeague coach of the Fenerbahce club of Turkey. Fragkias, 56, has coached in the Greek league for over 20 years and last April, spoke at the Athens International Coaching Clinic before an audience of over 1,000. For more information on the second World Hoops Clinic, contact coach Jay Salvador at +63928-1716108 or +63945-2053998 or email at allclinics11@gmail.com.