TIM CONE — FIBACALL HIM “hard headed” but Gilas Pilipinas coach Tim Cone is sticking to his guns.
Amid passionate fans’ online rumblings for additions and/or changes to his small pool after the frustrating February window, Mr. Cone said he isn’t inclined to tinker with what he’s been implementing since Day One.
“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,” said the Gilas mentor of his 12 regulars and three alternates who would embark on the bid to qualify for the 2027 Olympics.
“But as long as these guys want to continue to play and represent, we’re going to let them represent. People are going to get angry about it. They’re going to get angry at me about it. That’s the bottom line. But 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.”
Mr. Cone explained the many intricacies of redoing things as far as the system, team chemistry and the like if new faces keep on coming in.
“It’s not 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. It’s not as simple as just saying, okay, now we’re going to go to 15 or 18 or 20 people,” he said.
“We came in with a program, and we’re going to stick to that program as much as we can. We’re not going to be too hard-headed about it, or I guess that’s the way I’m being described now, being hard-headed. But we suffered some failure at this point.
“Hopefully we can learn from it. But you don’t learn from success; you learn from failure. 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.”
After a string of successes in 2024 highlighted by a famous upset of world No. 6 Latvia and No. 22 New Zealand and a 4-0 sweep of the first two windows of the FIBA Asia Cup Qualifiers, Gilas stumbled big time in its recent foray.
Though they started with a come-from-behind win against host Qatar, the Nationals lost badly to Lebanon and Egypt in the Doha Invitational Cup then with tired legs, fell to Chinese-Taipei and the Tall Blacks in the Qualifiers on the road.
Mr. Cone admitted their mistake in subjecting the Pinoy dribblers to the rigors of playing three games in three days in Qatar, flying home before packing their bags again for Taiwan and then heading to Auckland immediately after.
Then there’s the difficulty of adjusting to life minus 7-foot-3 Kai Sotto, who’s out on an ACL injury, and trying to fast-track the integration of returning big man AJ Edu into the triangle offense.
“I really don’t have words for what happened there. It was hard. It was tough. We didn’t respond as well as we hoped,” he said. — Olmin Leyba
