FIRECRACKERS were yet to explode in old Chinatown when Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas (SBP) lit fireworks of its own with the announcement of Chot Reyes returning to his old job as Gilas Pilipinas shepherd, replacing Tab Baldwin.
And understandably, the news was met with dismay, disbelief, and ultimately, confusion.
Don't get me wrong, Reyes is more than capable of handling the national team job. After all, he has held this post three times before. This certainly isn't his first rodeo.
And he has time and again proven his coaching prowess, from steering Gilas to the silver medal in the 2013 Fiba Asia Championship and earning a spot to the 2014 Fiba World Cup in Spain to his most recent dream comeback with TNT that ended San Miguel Corp.'s veritable stranglehold in the PBA.
Of course, he had his fair share of lowlights, but you take the good with the bad, right?
Yet what made the basketball federation's move quite baffling was the timing. Plain and simple bad timing.
The February window of the 2023 Fiba World Cup Asian qualifiers is just a little over three weeks away with Gilas facing a brutal four games-in-five days schedule against Group A rivals New Zealand, India, and Korea at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.
Will we have enough time?
Compounding the already complicated situation is the uncertainty over the status of the members of Baldwin's pool, including the first five special Gilas Pilipinas draftees namely Isaac Go, Rey Suerte, Allyn Bulanadi, and twins Matt and Mike Nieto whose contracts are set to expire later this month and are all pondering on kickstarting their careers in the PBA.
With some of the standouts from the impressive Gilas campaign last year thriving in their newfound professional careers overseas, it begs the question: who will be left when that ball is finally tossed at the Big Dome?
And granting the 16-man pool that Gilas built in December is kept intact, again the question begs to be asked, will we have enough time?
With all those challenges at hand, conventional wisdom points to Reyes calling up PBA players like what he did in his past go-rounds with Gilas. After all, the pro league has reiterated time and again its commitment to the national team program. Yet we couldn't help but wonder, with less than a month to make everything come to fruition, will pure dedication be enough?
Again, will we have enough time to make it work?
Such a quandary only brings Gilas back to its inherent problem under such program: the lack of cohesion largely due to the limited time for the team to really converge and play under one beat.
It would be nice to see Reyes turn Gilas into a well-oiled machine like his TNT crew which has garnered newfound success with Mikey Williams, Roger Pogoy, and Troy Rosario leading the way. Heck, if he could take that whole Tropang Giga team to the February window, it also wouldn't be too shabby.
But for this Gilas campaign, Reyes, sad to say, needs a miracle.
Those called up, as well as the few who will remain in the pool, will have their work cut out for them if they hope to have a favorable result from the games inside the Manila bubble.
Deja vu for Chot and Gilas
Reyes is nothing new to this, of course. Like his old Gilas days, he will once again be pressed for time, probably the shortest that he'll ever get, to put up a respectable showing amid all the pressure of performing on our home soil.
Worse still, Reyes will be denied the training camp that allowed his Gilas teams of 2013 and 2014 to earn the adulation of the avid Filipino fans under the 'Puso' battlecry.
For starters, can naturalized player Ange Kouame, or whoever's still left with him wearing the Gilas threads, thrive under Reyes' patented dribble-drive offense (or whatever system he chooses to use)?
And that's still a big IF since the availability of Kouame and the rest of the collegiate studs for national duty is questionable for the same reason that Baldwin suddenly became 'unavailable' for the Gilas coaching job.
What made this sudden shift all the more baffling for Gilas fans is that we've seen a formula work under Baldwin. And we didn't need to look far or refresh our basketball officials' memory because all of these happened just last year.
The reason Gilas had an outstanding performance inside the Clark bubble in the 2021 Fiba Asia Cup qualifiers last June and its commendable play in the Belgrade Olympic Qualifying Tournament a month later was due to the extensive time the group spent together, forming a coherent bond for the better part of three months inside the Inspire Sports Academy (ISA) in Calamba before going to war under Baldwin's watch.
Painfully, due to the restrictions brought upon by the new wave of COVID-19 cases from its Omicron variant, those who were part of the Gilas pool were forced to go home for the entirety of January as Metro Manila was placed under Alert Level 3, ultimately negating whatever progress they made from their thrice-a-week individual trainings back in December.
Frankly speaking, it feels like the SBP is taking two steps back, or probably more.
With Baldwin out of the picture in the Gilas program, all the gains in the buildup for the much-anticipated hosting of the 2023 Fiba World Cup next year feels lost.
Will his plans still be followed or are we bound to see an overhaul of the program that was rolled out for the past two years? Again and again and again, will we have enough time to do that?
It's not Reyes' fault, of course, and he shouldn't be the one to shoulder the blame. But whether he likes it or not, he'll be the one expected to do much of the heavy lifting.
It feels that we are back to square one.
Yes, the Philippines doesn't need to advance through these qualifiers as we've already booked our ticket to the global showpiece next year as one of the hosts. But we've long known that this process of putting together an all-star team and giving them weeks to make something out of nothing no longer works.
The World Cup is already next year and it will be here before you know it. Yet here we are, like a deer in the headlights and back in a system that we know doesn't work, and left with more questions than answers.
Let's just hope that all these fireworks do not explode in SBP's face.
Get more of the latest sports news & updates on SPIN.ph
NOTICE ON UNAUTHORIZED AND UNLAWFUL USE, PUBLICATION, AND/OR DISSEMINATION OF SPIN.PH CONTENT: Please be notified that any unauthorized and unlawful use, publication, and/or dissemination of Spin.ph’s content and/or materials is a direct violation of its legal and exclusive rights to the same, and shall be subject to appropriate legal action/s.
