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With NBA contract hanging, Jordan Clarkson is still questionable for Gilas.— FIBA.COM

National coach Chot Reyes tempered expectations as Gilas Pilipinas left for Europe Thursday night to continue preparing for the Fiba World Cup (International Basketball Federation) that the Philippines will be cohosting in August.

“We have low expectations. We’re going to get our butts kicked, for sure. But that’s all part of the process,” he told a few reporters at the departure lobby of Naia Terminal 3, just a couple of hours before the team’s flight to Estonia.

“We want to tell our countrymen that this is training. If we win these games, great, but this is a training trip—and that’s what tune-up games are all about,” he said.

Gilas landed in Tallinn on Friday (Manila time) and will soon plunge into tune-up games against Estonia and Finland national teams for what Reyes feels is a critical juncture in the team’s build-up for the global showcase.

“This is the start of the ‘teaming’ process and then it’s going to be difficult. We’re gonna [practice] two, three times a day. We’re going to play against very tough teams. And we’re going to start the process of developing team resilience because that’s going to be very, very important in the actual World Cup,” he said.

“We’re gonna make the most of what we have. The important thing is we start our process of becoming a team because right now we’re just a collection of players, we’re not yet a team,” the concurrent program director went on.

lean roster

Those who made the trip are two-time World Cuppers June Mar Fajardo and Japeth Aguilar, program cornerstone Dwight Ramos, Scottie Thompson, Chris Newsome, Jamie Malonzo, Poy Erram, brothers Kiefer and Thirdy Ravena, CJ Perez and relative newcomers Rhenz Abando and AJ Ed.

Justin Brownlee will be flying straight to Tallinn following a “non-basketball medical procedure,” while Ange Kouame, who is scheduled to graduate later this month, will join the team’s preps when it moves to Lithuania where the Nationals are penciled to play pro clubs .

A friendly match against the Latvian national team was originally scheduled, but Reyes said the plan has been scrapped. Gilas management, he said, is looking to replace that game with a contest against Norway.

Gilas is expecting to wrap this leg of the World Cup preps with the same number of players as a handful of standouts remain unavailable due to varying concerns.

‘No firm commitment’

Jordan Heading, Ray Parks Jr., Calvin Oftana and Roger Pogoy are all still working their way back to the pink of health, while Kai Sotto and Jordan Clarkson are navigating critical junctures of their respective careers in the National Basketball Association (NBA).

“We spoke [recently], to Jordan and his father Mike,” Reyes said. “There’s no firm commitment to dates and all of that because of his situation now—his contract is up in the air and a lot of it is going to depend on the NBA [Rookie] Draft.”

“[The] same,” he said when asked about Sotto, who is trying to crack the NBA by way of the Summer League in Las Vegas. “They are both saying they want to play. We know they both want to play, but the question here is when can they get here to become part of the team?”

Also on tap for Gilas is a pocket tournament in China sometime in early August. INQ

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