Returning Gilas Pilipinas head coach Tim Cone doesn’t like the idea of having Gilas Pilipinas playing as guest team in the Philippine Basketball Association Philippine Cup.
Cone, the winningest mentor in PBA history, shot down the suggesting of having Gilas play against PBA squads in the all-Filipino conference.
“No,” the 66-year-old Cone said when asked by Daily Tribune about the possibility of having Gilas playing as guest team in the PBA at the sidelines of the San Miguel Corporation-Philippine Sportswriters Association Awards Night on Monday at the Diamond Hotel.
“First of all, that means that I’ll have to coach them and not to coach Ginebra.”
Unlike before when he first handled the national team in 1998, Cone and his boys played as a guest squad against other PBA teams powered by two imports. The event was dubbed as the Centennial Cup with Mobiline bannered by Artemus McClary and Silas Mills emerging as champion.
Cone, however, doesn’t see that situation anymore as Gilas now have to play in the FIBA window tournaments every three months in a bid to qualify to the FIBA Asia Cup.
Instead, the American mentor wants to have those teams utilizing their players while loaning them to Gilas when needed.
“I don’t think that’s valuable,” Cone said.
“That’s not the intention of what we’re trying to do. We don’t want to pull players away from the teams. That’s not our intention. We want to keep the players with their own teams and we don’t want to disrupt the league in any ways. That’s not part of the plan.”
Cone said he wants all stakeholders — from the PBA to the University Athletic Association of the Philippines and National Collegiate Athletic Association as well as those seeing action overseas — to get on board so they could put up a strong national team in major international events.
In fact, enlisted in the initial pool are players coming from the PBA like Scottie Thompson, Chris Newsome, Calvin Oftana, CJ Perez, Jamie Malonzo and June Mar Fajardo.
From the UAAP, Cone tapped Kevin Quiambao of De La Salle University while also recalling the services of former Gilas players who are playing in the Japan B. League like Kai Sotto, AJ Edu, and Dwight Ramos as well as Carl Tamayo.
Ginebra’s resident import Justin Brownlee will serve as reinforcement pending the sanction that will be imposed on him by the world-governing body in basketball.
“The stakeholders were really pleased at the way we wanted to present it,” Cone said.
“My stakeholders are the PBA, the UAAP, the NCAA. We were trying to get players from these leagues. They’re on board. We’re trying to get a comprehensive program in which we can help everybody and not disrupt anybody.”
