None
of their victories came easy, which have led to a lot of negative reactions online.
So now we ask the question, should we be worried?
My
answer is no, primarily because of these three things:
PLAYER
DEVELOPMENT
The
likes of Kiefer Ravena and Jio Jalalon would never make it to court, we had the
likes of Jason Castro and Terence Romeo on the team. Neither would Christian
Standhardinger, the revelation of the tournament, had Blatche, Fajardo, or
Aguilar been on the team.
Giving
these players a chance to play significant minutes allows us to build a strong
reserves system, which hopefully minimizes the drop off in skill, talent, and
chemistry when our current Gilas stars are unavailable to play.
It
also allows us to create some kind of continuity between Gilas teams. Remember
when Alapag was the senior guy and Castro the understudy? That worked out
pretty well. And then there was Castro as the maestro and Romeo as his student.
Soon, Romeo will be our main guy, with Jalalon or Ravena primed to take over.
This tournament will go a long way to getting them ready for that day.
