MANILA, Philippines – Aware of Gilas Pilipinas’ presence in its city, the Miami Heat welcomed the Philippine national team and head coach Chot Reyes through its official Twitter account.
Welcome to Miami, @coachot and @smartgilasph! We hope your training camp for the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup is going well!
— Miami HEAT (@MiamiHEAT) July 28, 2014 Reyes, in response, invited the Heat to check out their practices.
@MiamiHEAT Yes it is! Thanks for the welcome. Hope you could drop by so we can visit
— Chot Reyes (@coachot) July 28, 2014 The Nationals are in Miami, South Florida, for a training camp in preparation for the 2014 FIBA World Cup in Madrid, Spain next month. They flew in with naturalized player Andray Blatche of the Brooklyn Nets, who happens to own a house in South Beach.
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Gilas pool members L.A. Tenorio and Beau Belga even posted photos of them with Heat forward Luol Deng.
The Heat recently acquired Deng in the free agency market, hoping the versatile forward will somehow fill the void left by superstar LeBron James, who decided not to re-sign with Miami and instead returned to Cleveland.