RJ Abarrientos (with ball) has national team experience but may be too young for the current Gilas pool. —FIBA. BASKETBALL
Barangay Ginebra acquired RJ Abarrientos and Isaac Go in time for the Philippine Basketball Association’s (PBA) upcoming 49th season.
That gave rise to speculation that Gin Kings head coach Tim Cone, who also calls the shots for Gilas Pilipinas, could reel two more talents who have previously served the national basketball program into the national team should the squad run into a manpower crisis.
Such a thinking, however, would be shortsighted according to Cone. For starters, Abarrientos and Go will pose varying advantages—and challenges.
“That’s a long way away right now. And again, [Abarrientos is] a young guy. He could be [in the pool] three or four years from now, but you don’t know what the (Gilas) team’s [composition is] gonna be (in the future),” the champion coach said on Monday during a press briefing in Mandaluyong City.
While Abarrientos could be a nifty workaround for whenever Scottie Thompson is unavailable for national team duty, the same couldn’t be said for Go as he would be undersized for his natural position.
“Isaac is a big man at 6’7” in the PBA, but he’s not a big man on the world stage,” Cone said. “I mean, you can’t take his level and take him to Europe and make him play 6’10,” 6’11,” guys there. He’s gonna be overwhelmed. He’s just not big enough.”
“When we talk about big men in Gilas, we’re talking about guys who are 6’10,” 6’11,” or 7 feet,” he added.
Cone acknowledged the fact that both Abarrientos and Go will be exposed to the Ginebra system where the same tenets are also being applied at Gilas, but that would also mean rolling back whatever strides the national program has made.
New face
“Really, we’re gonna try and stick with the 12 because we already have history with those 12, have had preparation with those 12. We keep saying it’s all cumulative,” he said.
“Every time we bring in somebody new, we’ll have to start at this certain point to move forward. All that stuff in the past won’t mean much if we continue to change the players. So we want to keep the players as much as we can because we are accumulating experiences together,” he went on.
Interestingly, Cone intends to bring a relatively new face on board for the long haul. The seasoned mentor is hoping to have his old reliable at Alaska and now Far Eastern University’s (FEU) head coach Sean Chambers, who was with the contingent in the Olympic Qualifying Tournament, as a fixture in the Gilas brain trust.
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“The players loved being around Sean. They love listening to him. He’s just a great person and I think he’s gonna add a lot to the program. I’m hoping he becomes permanent. But we have to work that out with FEU, we have to work that out with the SBP (Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas), we have to work that out with Sean.” INQ