TIM CONE, the coach who led Gilas Pilipinas to gold medals at last year’s Asian and Southeast Asian Games, discusses the next steps the men’s national team must take to preserve its program.
The highly decorated tactician dismissed speculation that he would be named Gilas’ official coach for the next four years, stating that the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas (SBP) had yet to make a final choice.
Cone, on the other side, expressed his thoughts on how the SBP should handle the roster formation and head coaching system for the Philippine men’s national basketball team.
Photo Courtesy: Paolo Del Rosario
“In my opinion, again I don’t wanna speak for the SBP, but if you’re gonna use PBA players and Japan players on your team, you can’t have a full-time job doing Gilas,” the two-time winner of the PBA Grandslam.
“It’s just not enough work, it’s only three windows. Basically, this year, you’re talking a maximum of eight games, and that’s if you advance in the middle window. But most likely, you’re talking about five to six games this year,” he said.
Cone cited the 2025 FIBA Asia Cup Qualifiers and the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament, which will take place during 2024, and stated that PBA players may not be able to devote full-time to the program.
“You can’t pull out the PBA players to practice with them for a full year, or even a month or two before each window. I’m just telling you my opinion,” he explained.
Meanwhile, Cone provides another alternative for SBP to explore while constructing future lineups for the Gilas Pilipinas team.
Photo Courtesy: FIBA Basketball
“Get a bunch of young players, like what we’ve done in the past, and try to practice with them everyday, and let them grow for a number of years,” the coach stated.
“But, if you have another program where you get young college players and you put a team together, and you get to practice everyday, now, that’s another program,” he said.
This, however, is not the ideal alternative that the tactician envisions. He suggests another choice that he believes would better represent the country in future appearances.
“My opinion is you need the best players of the country to represent you. You gotta figure out a way to get the stakeholders to allow you to get the best players to allow you to get the best players in the country,” Cone stated.
“Including the PBA, and the Japan and the Korea [Filipino imports], and allow them to give you the time to work with these guys. You gotta figure out a program that would allow them to do that,” stressing the possibilities that await the SBP.
Photo Courtesy: Paolo Del Rosario
Cone is a staunch believer that when it comes to player selection, fans cannot expect everything to go Gilas’ way at once considering multiple difficulties and options must be examined before assembling a team.
“You wanna have a chance against the Europeans, or the Americas, or even teams like China, Lebanon, Iran, Australia, you can’t go with lesser teams and expect to beat those guys. Is that a fair expectation? A reasonable expectation?”
However, the Philippines’ winningest coach stressed that these are his personal thoughts. He prefers to leave these matters to the SBP to address.
“It really depends on how the SP decides to handle it. So you decide how you wanna do it. If anybody else has other ideas, then I’m sure the SBP would be willing to talk about it,” he stated.
At the end of the day, it is a more complex task than one may imagine. According to Cone, other countries are also having difficulty obtaining player commitments.
