COACH Yeng Guiao thinks he knows why his team lost to South Korea in the Asian Games basketball quarterfinals on Monday. He thinks it is him. “I take full responsibility,” he said after his team put up a gallant fight until it faded in the closing minutes. The loss meant the Philippines would not be winning any medal.
A coach taking the blame for a loss is nothing new. That’s in the old sports dictum that, in defeat, a coach takes the blame and, in victory, gives the players all the credit. That’s a dictum that wins respect from players.
But in this case, Guiao doesn’t have to. He is not to blame for the loss. Neither are his players. Nor, more so, him and his players. The team played a hell of a game. The coaching staff he led gave its best. One player actually chipped two teeth diving for the ball, and if that isn’t proof these players put team goals above personal safety — what is?
But if Guiao is looking at where blame really falls, he can focus on the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas (SBP), whose indecisiveness created the atmosphere of confusion in the country’s Asian Games basketball campaign.
Just a week or so before the tournament, the SBP cancelled the country’s participation. After that decision was lambasted by netizens, who were joined by a number of high-ranking government officials, the SBP capitulated. Changing its mind, it formed a team on the fly that then led to the mad scramble to bring in Fil-American NBA player Jordan Clarkson to augment the “token” squad.
But this left Guiao planning a strategy without Clarkson, and then shifting gears to include Clarkson, who arrived in Jakarta just as the Philippines was dismantling Kazakhstan in the opening game. Guiao and the team were ecstatic to see Clarkson, no doubt about that. But even a coach of Guiao’s guile and experience knew that shifting strategy very suddenly is risky bravado at best. Getting a team to perform like a well-oiled fighting machine is just not done overnight.
The Cleveland Cavaliers’ Clarkson arrived tired, maybe even mentally disoriented. But like a pro (and from the most celebrated basketball league in the world, too), Clarkson did more than creditably against China, in his first game with a team that he had not even practiced with before this. But because of the long-haul flight and the suddenness of this casting call, Clarkson could not hang in there long enough, suffering cramps in the dying minutes, allowing China to escape, 82-80.
In retrospect, the last blow to the Philippines did not come in the game against South Korea, which came after China. It was still the China fight that did it. That was the golden opportunity missed. That was the win that would have given the Philippines a clean slate going into the quarterfinals, and, as the matchups showed, an easier path to the medal round. Only Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, and Syria, considered weak teams, were in the way.
On the other hand, Korea was ready for the Philippines. The coaching staff had scouted the Philippine team well. This showed when the Koreans threw a zone defense against the Filipinos, taking Gilas by surprise. It looked like an ambush. Gilas couldn’t adjust its own strategy fast enough. This is probably why Guiao took the blame for the loss. He was clearly outwitted by the Korean coach. Add to that the fact that South Korea was well-prepared, well-adjusted, and ready with its weapon of mass destruction: the three-point shot.
"We just weren't comfortable with the zone [defense], even Jordan had a lot of problems dealing with it," Guiao said. "They just zoned us all game long. They stuck with the zone, lived and died with the zone, and we couldn't adjust in time."
That may be true. But the story could still have gone very differently if the country had just sent a stronger team that was more prepared, not one so hastily assembled it was considered a token team. Imagine deciding to send a team just weeks before the Asian Games! Of course, it is not Guiao’s place to criticize the SBP, even if this federation overseeing all Philippine participation in international basketball events clearly mishandled preparations for the Asian Games. Guiao is a good soldier. More so now that he’s been named to replace Chot Reyes as interim coach of Gilas in the FIBA qualifiers this September.
There it is. The SBP is so obsessed with FIBA that it nearly ignored the Asian Games which, it is now only discovering, is also important to Filipinos. In fact, the country may have had a better chance at bringing in an Asian Games gold than it has at bagging a slot in the FIBA World Cup. All it took was for the SBP to plan ahead and form a more competitive team. In other words, for the SBP to do its job.
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