GILAS Pilipinas coach Tim Cone plans to keep the 12 players he named in the new pool intact for as long as possible in the hope of developing a cohesive unit that can be fielded for every tournament.
Cone said he intends to keep the same core for four years, but is open to make minor tweaks along the way to the pool made up of PBA players Scottie Thompson, Chris Newsome, Calvin Oftana, CJ Perez, Jamie Malonzo, and June Mar Fajardo, Japan B.League stars Dwight Ramos, AJ Edu, Carl Tamayo, and Kai Sotto, UAAP cager Kevin Quiambao, and naturalized player Justin Brownlee.
READ Quiambao, Sotto, Tamayo, Brownlee beef up Cone's handpicked Gilas pool
“The team is going to stay together through every window,” said Cone on the sidelines of the Philippine Sportswriters Association awards at the Diamond Hotel on Monday.
“If we play Southeast Asian Games, we expect to play this team in the Southeast Asian games. If we play Asian Games, World Cup qualifiers, FIBA Cup, Fiba Cup qualifiers, (we play this team),” Cone said.
Cone said he wants to build the Gilas team as if it was a club team where they grow in each tournament they compete in.
“As we are saying, we want to keep this team intact because every time we either grow from the success or failure that we have. It kinda looks like a PBA team or NBA team or B.League team, any kind of basketball team, you keep a team together as much as you can and you try to get them together and learn from the failures and successes,” said Cone.
Cone though admitted keeping the 12 all through the four years will be easier said than done as changes due to health injuries could also happen along the way.
“Eventually, you’ll grow it. You have to make a little tweak here and there. Ideally, it will be the same 12 guys for four years. But that’s not realistic. There would be tweaks along the way but the idea is to keep an intact core,” said Cone.
The concurrent Ginebra coach also admitted he doesn’t believe in forming a huge pool.
“We are just going with 12 guys,” said Cone. “We didn’t want to put a big pool together. That takes more time. The PBA, the leagues, the UAAP, they don’t want to stop their league for a month or two for us to prepare. If we are going to try that, there will be resistance to lend their players.”
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