by Dave Albarado
Miracle in Belgrade? I doubt it!
We have to be realistic in our expectations when it comes to Gilas Pilipinas’ campaign in Belgrade. Let’s face the reality that Filipinos being able to topple a team like Serbia would be impossible. I mean the best result we can get from the game against a mighty team like Serbia is to lose by less than 20. If we are able to play like the 2014 Gilas team that went to Spain and narrowly lost against powerhouses Greece and Argentina then I would be a happy man. There is no way in this universe a team like the Philippines can beat mighty Serbia.
However, the game against Dominican Republic can be something I can look forward to as Gilas can pull a surprise. It is not Gilas who can win easily against Dominican Republic—no, sir— it is just that this team has a bunch of players standing 6-foot-6 and 6-foot-7 with one player standing 6-foot-11.
Thus, we can match-up well with this team compared to Serbia. The key here is we are able to win one in the Belgrade Olympic qualifying tournament and move to the knockout phase. It would be a huge achievement for Philippine basketball if we are able to move past the classification phase and perhaps get some experience as we continue to train for the 2023 World Cup.
The goal here is to become better and be able to at least qualify in the next round of the 2023 World Cup and as the best Asian team to get an outright berth for the 2024 Paris Olympics. We may have a moonshot of gaining a ticket to Tokyo Olympics, but we can use this experience to become better and perhaps one day beat the likes of Australia and New Zealand. These teams are beatable and we can have the victory over them with chemistry and teamwork. My concern right now is our line up come Fiba Asia as it is possible that Kai Sotto will be leaving Gilas to start training with Adelaide.
Kai’s absence in the Asian Cup is a huge void considering we create a lot of mismatches especially down at the post. Ange Kouame can man the paint for us but he is our only man tall enough to intimidate our opponents. In the tune-up game between China and Gilas, we are unable to control the match in the end game as the Chinese are simply too tall. We need to bring our big and tall players this August in Jakarta for the Fiba Asia Cup. We need to maintain our ceiling, which gave Korea a hard time.
We may be able to get AJ Edu to play by August but that is also an impossibility. Perhaps, we better ask Kai to stay and play with Gilas during the Asia Cup. I reckon that without Kai it is going to be tougher for the team guys like Dwight Ramos or SJ Belangel to bring the victory to the Philippine side.
With a few days to go, Fiba will be staging the Olympic Qualifying Tournament to determine the next participants in the 5×5 Olympic event. The dream that the Philippines can earn a ticket to Tokyo by way of the 3×3 evaporated into nothingness. We simply need to get more playing exposure outside the Philippines. Then again, the pandemic makes things hard.
Another Filipino will be playing for the Japanese BLeague second division in the coming season. Juan Gomez de Liaño qualified as an Asian exempt player even he holds a Spanish passport aside his Filipino. We know that you can’t play in the BLeague as an Asian import if you hold dual passports. The BLeague changed its rules that a dual passport holder has already played with hiscountry’s national team then the player, in this case, Juan Gomez de Liaño, can play without import restrictions like Thirdy Ravena.