MANILA, Philippines – Gilas Pilipinas will focus on the condition prevailing during the tournament and hope to simulate it in their buildup for the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament set July 5-10 at the MOA Arena in Pasay.
Gilas Pilipinas coach Tab Baldwin said it would also entail a new mindset for the Nationals, who are used to playing all year-round in a league.
“The pace of going through a league is different than the pace of going through a tournament, where it’s do or die everyday,” said Baldwin.
“You know, players get into habits, and we have to break those habits. We kind of call them tendencies, but they’re really bad habits, so some of that has to be broken down,” Baldwin also said.
Basically, it’s about discipline that Baldwin said they must instil as they play against the world powers in the last qualifying event for the Olympic proper where the Philippines will go up against France, New Zealand, Turkey, Canada and Senegal.
“We’ve got to lift the tempo of everything that we do,” stressed Baldwin, a one-time Final Four finisher in the FIBA World Championship with the New Zealand team.
“We’ve got to recognize that the demands of the international game are such that players will get bigger, they’ll get smarter, much more experienced and they won’t be as quick in a lot of cases, but they’re almost as quick with the increased length. It’s like they’re quicker,” Baldwin pointed out.
But Baldwin isn’t discounting Gilas’ chance for an upset, saying there’s a way to offset their opponents’ advantages.
“It takes some time, it takes a lot of effort on the players’ part, and we as coaches have to be intelligent about what we do,” he added.
Baldwin also said that they haven’t started working on their defense and they were at a loss on how long they could wait before they have a healthy unit and introduce new system to the team.
“So we’re kind of searching a little bit, we’re feeling our way. We’ve introduced some new offensive systems and principles. We have a lot to work on with that, so we’ll probably continue to work on that before we get too much into the defense,” he added.
“In terms of defensive individuals, we all have to play defense. They all have to do their job. They all have to buy into the system. They have to execute the system,” he also said.