Phl ready for D-Day in FIBA World Cup

BARCELONA – Which five teams the Philippines plays in the preliminaries, where and the order of games will be known at the FIBA World Cup draw in the Palau de la Musica here early this morning (Manila time) as the suspense finally ends for 24 participating countries.

Gilas coach Chot Reyes, team manager Aboy Castro and logistics director Andrew Teh will attend the draw. They arrived here last Saturday and will leave tomorrow to scout the housing, training and playing facilities in the venue where the Philippines plays five preliminary contests. The group will return home on Friday.

Four brackets will be composed of six teams each for the tournament. It will be a seeded draw unlike the FIBA-Asia Championships in Manila last year where the system was open. The other day, FIBA announced six “pots” of four teams each from which will be drawn the entries in a bracket. The teams in a pot will not play each other in the preliminaries. Pot 1 is made up of the top four seeds, US, Spain, Argentina and Lithuania. This guarantees that the top squads won’t clash in the preliminaries.

The Philippines was classified in Pot 3 with Korea, Iran and New Zealand, meaning no Asian country will face off in the first round. Angola, Egypt, Senegal and Finland are in Pot 2 while Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia and Ukraine comprise Pot 4. In Pot 5 are Brazil, Puerto Rico, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. Australia, France, Greece and Turkey are in Pot 6.

Host Spain will head the first bracket A and the US, the third bracket C. Argentina and Lithuania will draw which team takes bracket B or D. The drawing format will veer countries away from joining a bracket where others are from the same zone so that Finland is assured of playing in either C with the US or the bracket with Argentina.

Four cities will host each bracket in the preliminaries – Bilbao, Seville, Granada and Las Palmas de Gran Canarias. A source said the US will play in Bilbao because the 16,700-seat Bizkaia Arena has the largest capacity of the four venues. Spain is rumored to be playing at the 8,500-seat Palacio Municipal de Deportes in Granada because of a huge sponsorship deal. The other venues in the preliminaries are the 7,100-seat Palacio Municipal de Deportes in Seville and the 9,400-seat Gran Canaria Arena.

Reyes said his preference is to play in the US bracket. “We plan to set up training camp in Vitoria and if the US plays in Bilbao, it will be very convenient with Bilbao only 45 minutes away by bus from Vitoria,” he said. “We also get a chance to play against NBA stars. Every team in the World Cup is tough. There won’t be an easy game. We may have better chances to beat some teams more than others but that depends on which players show up.”

Coaches from participating countries are constantly reaching out to Reyes, inviting Gilas to play in pocket tournaments before the World Cup. It appears the word is out that the Philippines is back as a major player on the global stage.

“It’s not just because of the news that we’re bringing in two NBA players to camp although everyone’s asking about that,” said Reyes. “I think the basketball community is aware of what happened at the FIBA-Asia Championships last year and how we battled our way to the finals. We play an exciting brand of basketball and it’s being recognized. Our problem is we don’t have the luxury of time to prepare for the World Cup. We’ve had to turn down invitations to play in pocket tournaments. Playing in those tournaments would definitely get us ready for war in Spain.”

The PBA recently decided to compress the season schedule to end anywhere between July 15 to 25 from the original Aug. 13. That will release every PBA player whom Reyes picks for the Gilas 28-man pool to prepare as a unit for over a month before the FIBA World Cup begins on Aug. 30.

Nearly every country in the World Cup will begin training in the first week of July at the latest. The Philippines will start training the latest although Reyes plans to call for Monday-only practice every week this month. Reyes said he would’ve liked to start on June 1 to fully arm Gilas for the country’s return to the World Cup after 36 years. That start would allow Reyes to bring Gilas to boot camp in Lithuania and New Zealand, as he did before the FIBA-Asia Championships, and accept an invitation to play at the FIBA Asia Cup in China on July 11-19. Other invitations are to play in France either on Aug. 8-10 or Aug. 23-25, Egypt on July 14-22 and the Jones Cup on Aug. 9-18. The other day, Reyes received an invitation from Puerto Rico for Gilas to play in San Juan.

“We’re very grateful to the PBA for its support,” said Reyes. “Once we find out which teams we play in the preliminaries, we’ll begin to line up our 24-man pool and prepare our battle plans. From the way things look, we could use a little more training time, perhaps starting July 1 so we can get more games in. Lithuania, for instance, plans to play 14 games before the World Cup and that includes two pocket tournaments it will host.”

Reyes is closely coordinating with Spanish club coach Nacho Lezcano and Spanish player agent Igor Crespo to set up boot camp in Vitoria where practice games are being scheduled with the Ivory Coast, Canada and top-rate Spanish pro squads.