It’s the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk
about: how would Gilas 3.0 fare against Gilas 2.0, the acknowledged best
Philippine basketball team in recent times?
Just to be clear, we’ll be using the Gilas 2.0 lineup used
at the FIBA World Cup, which means 2014 Andray Blatche will be in play, as well
as Paul Lee but not Larry Fonacier nor Marcus Douthit.
We now move on to the last part of this series, the guards.
GILAS 2.0
|
GILAS 3.0
|
Jayson Castro
|
Jayson Castro
|
LA Tenorio
|
Terence Romeo
|
Jimmy Alapag
|
Dondon Hontiveros
|
Paul Lee
|
Once again, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Castro
of Gilas 3.0 will be equal to Castor of 2.0. The discussion will now focus on
Tenorio, Alapag and Lee vs Romeo and Hontiveros.
ON OFFENSE
On offense, the Gilas 2.0 backcourt is just so much better
than Gilas 3.0, not just on the scoring front but, more importantly, on the
playmaking front.
Tenorio and Alapag may be the best pure point guards in
recent Philippine basketball history and their leadership skills as well as
their ability to control the game is practically legendary. Alapag became a
worldwide sensation for his timely outside snipings during the FIBA World Cup
and Tenorio masterfully quarterbacked the Gilas 2.0 team, despite giving
several inches to his counterpart. Paul Lee, on the other hand, is a rugged
do-it-all guard who can score inside and outside, and provides muscle and
tenacity to a small backcourt. But where this trio really excels is their
ability to control the game. Alapag does it with his shooting and passing,
Tenorio with his ability to probe the defense's weak spots and exploit them,
and Lee with his powerful drives to the basket and ability to find the spot up
shooter.
Romeo and Hontiveros are actually the more offensive minded
players, when compared to the Gilas 2.0 backcourt. Hontiveros is the latest
reincarnation for the great Visayan shooter (Elmer Cabahug, Al Solis, and James
Yap are among his predecessors) and he was able to showcase this in the Jones
Cup, where he scored 21 points against the bigger New Zealand team, including
11 point in overtime to give the Philippines the comeback victory. Unfortunately,
Hontiveros’ shooting touch had been spotty all tournament long and, being the
designated long bomber on the team, that could be problematic.
Romeo’s emergence as a scorer has been one of the bigger
stories in Asian international play and he’s been worth every word. His
crossover moves has got to be on every scouting report of every potential Gilas
opponent and his daredevil drives make for good locker room fodder. Their
weakness as a pair is their ability to make plays for their teammates. When
Romeo puts his head down and drives to the basket, he barely passes out to a shooter
or a cutting post player. It’s just that lately, his drives are so effective
that you can live with him taking those shots.
In the Jones Cup, Romeo had 18 pts and no assists against
Chinese-Taipei, had 23 points and 1 assist against South Korea, had 11 points
and 2 assists against Russia, had 16 points and 2 assists against Japan before
closing out his Jones Cup campaign with an 8 point, 0 assist effort against
Iran. That’s an average of 15.2 points and 1 assist per game. As a potential
starting point guard, that’s also troubling.
ON DEFENSE
Again, Gilas 2.0 has the upper hand in this category. While smaller than their Gilas 3.0
counterparts, Gilas 2.0 had the experience and in the case of Paul Lee, the
physical tools to counterbalance the backcourt’s lack of height.
In basically every international tournament Gilas have
played, opposing guards have tried to exploit the smaller Filipino guards. Even
now, we face the prospect of facing Iran’s talented 6-foot point guard Mahdi
Kamrani, China’s tall point guard combo of Lu Xiaoyu (6’3”) and Guo Ailun (6-4),
and Qatar’s young 6’5” point guard Mohamed Hassan Mohamed.
The obvious answer, of course, is for Gilas to employ an
active help defense that provides protection and support to the Gilas guards. Alapag
and Tenorio have always played defense that belies their actual size and have
very good instincts when it comes to playing the passing lanes. They are also
physical players of the John Stockton mold, not afraid to get in the middle of
the action for the chance to strip their opponents of the ball. Paul Lee has
the speed to go toe-to-toe with most international point guards and he
certainly has the body build to bang with
them.
Romeo and Hontiveros are simply not as capable as the trio
of Alapag, Tenorio, and Lee was defensively. Both are willing defenders but their
defensive philosophy is more the passive “hope-he-gets-bothered-by-my-presence”
style than the more active, physical defense employed by Tenorio and Lee or the
cerebrally fueled pesky defense of Alapag. They are not defensive sieves in the
strictest sense of the word but if we want good defense against good Asian
guards, Romeo and Hontiveros won’t be able to provide it.
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