Gilas Pilipinas vows to come up with a rock-solid preparation as it heads for the second leg of its training for the FIBA Basketball World Cup that the country will host from 25 August to 10 September.
Gilas assistant coach Tim Cone said they are aware that their foes in the preliminaries — Italy, Angola and Dominican Republic — have been working hard so they might as well intensify their training for the prestigious 32-nation tournament.
The Filipinos have already arrived in the Estonian capital of Tallinn for the first phase of their European camp.
Gilas head coach Chot Reyes presided over the workout at the Spordiklubi Nord gymnasium following their backbreaking trip from Manila via Istanbul.
Cone said training in Europe is all part of the sacrifice.
“I think it’s really about Coach Chot. I just think this is an opportunity for us to understand the seriousness of what we’re doing,” Cone said in a Viber message to Daily Tribune.
He added that the Italians are doing their best to dominate Group A of the preliminaries and advance to the second round against the qualifiers in Group B composed of Serbia, South Sudan, China and Puerto Rico.
“I just saw an article today about Italy,” Cone said.
“Italy is like playing seven different countries and it is obviously preparing and preparing hard against tough teams — Greece, Spain and Serbia — and that’s one of the teams we’re going to play.”
“We’ll figure out a way of trying to match or surpass their preparation. That’s what this is all about.”
Gilas will be facing the national teams of Finland and Estonia before taking an eight-hour trip to Kaunas where they will face some club and commercial teams.
Cone said they are looking forward to these friendly matches as they get to test their level of preparation against quality teams.
“Finland is really a tough team,” said Cone, the winningest mentor in the Philippine Basketball Association.
“Estonia, we saw their video against Italy and they lost to them by eight points. But they’re huge. They’re bigger than us. It’s going to be interesting to play them.”
