Reality bites
From the excitement and the ‘gigil’ for the Gilas to advance from the group stage comes the frustration and the misery of elimination. The worlwide web was promptly bombed with a barrage of fire and venom by inconsolable keyboard warriors dedicating their fury to embattled head coach Chot Reyes and at least a couple of other players.
Reyes had been at the recieving end of hard and dirty fouls for sometime but since he had the full confidence and backing of the country’s basketball godfather, Gilas continues to have him calling the shots, damn if he misfires or is on target.
FIBA is an international tournament and the support for the Gilas, as expected, was phenomenal that visitors were reportedly awed by such fanaticism. But the jeers towards Reyes had shone on us a negative light from the visiting teams and their followers.
We can say what we want but if the powers-that-be still unbelievably believe in the capability of Reyes, as if they care if our loud grumblings all becomes a careless whiper.
Jordan Clarkson is Jordan Clarkson, no question about that, but there was too much dependence on him that when he’s in trouble, there is the tendency to force things resulting in turnovers. Instead of the frequent dribble-drive, plays could have been designed specifically for big men Junemar Fajardo and AJ Edu who both did very well. Kai Sotto with his length, had he been more agile like Edu, could have been the game changer.
It was a good team composition, with some analysts saying the best Gilas iteration, but some assets, who could have been productive, were not used. Maybe in the classification rounds, we can finally see their true potentials.
It’s all over but the whining. We can bash everyone on the team but it won’t change things. The bottomline is that we can never be at par with the powerhouses of basketball because height and heft is might in this game. With just a select few gifted with height abnormalities, we belong to vertically-challenged race. Reality bites and it stings.
Gilas missed one guy that had he been on the team, we won’t even need the services of Clarkson and Justin Brownlee. If he can tell earthquakes to “Istap!”, what can keep him from stopping ordinary mortals on the way to scoring 119 points.
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