THE Gilas Pilipinas program is fresh from celebrating a sweep of the four basketball gold medals in 3x3 and the five-a-side game in the 30th Southeast Asian Games, but it hardly has time to rest.
Not with the qualifiers for the Fiba Asia Cup drawing near.
In less than two months, the qualifiers for the 2021 Fiba Asia Cup - the reformatted Asian championship for basketball - kicks off with the Philippines playing home and away matches against Thailand and Indonesia.
By virtue of its qualification to the last Fiba World Cup in China, Gilas is seeded to the final phase of the qualifiers where 24 teams will battle for a place in the 16-team tournament that will battle for the Asian championship.
Gilas is bracketed in Group A with rival South Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia. The top two teams from each of the six groups - as well as the four best third-placers - will advance to the finals.
The Philippines finished runner-up in the last two Fiba Asia Cups it competed in in 2013 in Manila and 2015 in Changsha, China, but it has not won the Asian championship since the 1973 tournament in Manila.

Gilas is expected to easily handle both Indonesia and Thailand in the February qualifiers. A national team coached by Tim Cone and made up exclusively of PBA players beat Indonesia by 26 points, 97-71, and Thailand by 34, 115-81, in the gold-medal game.
But there's just one missing detail?
Gilas still has no team to speak of. Or, if there is a team to begin with, no one is revealing the details.
The Gilas team that competed in the 2019 Fiba World Cup in China is considered disbanded following the resignation of Yeng Guiao. So is the team of Cone, who came out to say that he didn't expect to stay in the national team job a minute longer after the run to the SEA Games gold medal.
So who will coach the team? And who will be players be? Nothing is clear at this point.
The only detail with some certainty is that the five PBA rookies who were drafted to the Gilas pool, namely Isaac Go, Matt and Mike Nieto, Rey Suerte and Allyn Bulanadi, will play a role in the next national team.
Judging from the choices, it is apparent Tab Baldwin had a big hand in the selection of the five players. But the Ateneo coach's appointment as project director of the national team program has yet to be made official until now.
Will Baldwin end up coaching Gilas in the qualifiers? Or will he be choosing the next national coach? Those are questions only the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas can answer. And right now, there is no word yet from the SBP.
Will PBA players still be involved in the Fiba Asia Cup qualifiers? League sources said PBA players can still be tapped for the February window since it's the league's offseason, but there are doubts if the pros will still be made available for the November 2019 and February 21 windows.

Gilas plays Thailand on Feb. 20 and Indonesia three days later in the first of the three windows. The team meets Korea away come the second window in November.
On which team will take on that challenge is anybody's guess at this point.
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