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    Daleo would love to have naturalized player to make Thais competitive

    Thailand coach admits being in the dark with prospects of adding naturalized player
    Jun 19, 2021
    PHOTO: Fiba.basketball

    IF coach Chris Daleo will have it his way, he'd definitely love to have a naturalized player at his disposal for Thailand, much like what is done in the Philippines and Indonesia.

    Unfortunately, it's not his call as the American coach admitted that he's not really in the know when it comes to the moves of the Basketball Sport Association of Thailand, the country's national federation for the sport.

    "Those decisions aren't up to me," Daleo admitted. "People ask me all the time: 'Where's Tyler Lamb? Where's Moses Morgan? Are you going to naturalize somebody?' They give me the team and then I go with what they give me."

    "I'm not privy to those conversations that go on and those things. Would I like to be? Yes. Would I love to have those players? Absolutely. But I don't and this is what I have, this is what I have to work with."

    The absence of a naturalized player, or even talents with foreign bloodline like Lamb and Morgan, definitely hurt Thailand as it suffered its fifth straight defeat to remain winless in the 2021 Fiba Asia Cup qualifiers.

    And it suffered the latest loss in humiliating fashion as it got stomped on by Korea, 120-53, by a whopping 67 points.

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    It was such a horrendous showing that Daleo feels that all the headways Thailand basketball made from its silver-medal finish in the 30th Southeast Asian Games and its competitive showing in the first window against Korea, which ended in a 93-86 defeat in Seoul back in February 2020, were all flushed down the drain.

    "I'll be honest with you, it was like 15 steps backwards," he lamented, failing to hide his frustrations from the game.

    "It's very frustrating. We've played better basketball and we did not show it today. It's one thing to lose a ballgame, but the way you go about losing it... This is hard for me to stomach. You can lose the ballgame, but still rotate well and defend well and run your offenses good and it just didn't go your way. But what we did today, the product we put on the floor is not indicative for the way I coach the game of basketball. And that's why I'm so disappointed and upset."

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    He continued: "It's so disheartening. We've gone over rotations and ball adjustments, contesting shots, and for some players for years. And yet we have now grown away from that. So I'm very disappointed in the way we played and the product that we produce on the basketball court and that pretty much sums it up for me."

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      Daleo and the rest of Thailand, however, can still make one last push for the continental showpiece with the game against Indonesia on Sunday morning very well deciding the third placer for Group A.

      Indonesia is already qualified as hosts, which puts more pressure for Thailand to win the game by more than 14 points to earn a berth to the second round, where the group third placers dispute a last chance ticket to the 2021 Fiba Asia Cup in August.
      ___

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      PHOTO: Fiba.basketball
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