2 weeks ago
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February 27, 2025 | 11:36am
MANILA, Philippines -- Gilas Pilipinas head coach Tim Cone insisted that the current national team pool will not be tinkered with “at this point,” underscoring that a bigger pool “is not that simple.”
Gilas recently came from a disappointing third and final window of the FIBA Asia Cup qualifiers in Chinese Taipei and New Zealand.
Entering the final window of the qualifiers with a 4-0 record last week and the FIBA Asia Cup berth already secured, the Philippines lost its games against Chinese Taipei, 91-84, and New Zealand, 87-70.
The Nationals played without big man Kai Sotto, who injured his ACL at the start of the year.
While Cone said that while the adjustment playing without Sotto “was bigger than we thought”, the pool will not be touched.
“There's so many things beyond what people are talking about. It's not just that easy to pull somebody out or add to the pool or get a bigger pool. There's finances involved. There's budget. There's extra travel time, more practice time,” Cone told reporters after Barangay Ginebra’s win over NorthPort in Game 1 of their PBA Commissioner’s Cup semis series Wednesday evening.
“It's not as simple as just saying, 'okay, now we're going to go to 15 or 18 or 20 people.' It's not that simple,” he added.
The veteran mentor stressed that they will stick to the program that they came in with “as much as we can.”
And while Cone has been hearing comments from fans about him supposedly being hard-headed, that is not what he is going for.
“We're not going to be too hard-headed about it, or I guess that's the way I'm being described at this point, being hard-headed. We're not going to be too hard-headed about it, but we suffered some failure at this point,” he said.
“So at this point, no, we're not going to add to the pool. We're not going to subtract from the pool, unless there's guys out there that don't want to join us anymore. But as long as these guys want to continue to play and represent, we're going to let them represent,” he added.
Cone also emphasized that their journey will not always be easy, and that while they had a rough patch this month, they will learn from it.
“You don't learn from success. You learn from failure. And I think that what we said from the very beginning, we're not going to win all the time. We're not going to be great all the time, and that's just an impossible thing to do. But we can be better than what we were, that's for darn sure. We can be better than what we were.
“We came in with a program. We came with an idea, and we're not going to change it at that first point. We'll see what happens. We'll take another chance,” he continued.
With Sotto sidelined, fans on social media clamor for other players to possibly be included in the national team.
Among those who were floated was big man Quentin Millora-Brown.
But Cone said that with Sotto missing the rest of the year, they are just “going to have to weather the storm without him”.
This year’s FIBA Asia Cup will be held in Saudi Arabia in August.
