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BEST
CASE SCENARIO TEAM VS OPPONENTS
C –
JunMar Fajardo
PF –
Slim Andray Blatche/Ranidel de Ocampo/Marc Pingris
SF –
Gabe Norwood/Calvin Abueva/Jeth Troy Rosario
SG –
Jordan Clarkson/Paul Lee/ Jeff Chan
PG –
Jayson Castro/Terence Romeo
This
team can do a lot of damage and, depending on the other teams in their group,
may have a slight chance of getting a ticket to Rio.
Teams
they can handle: Iran, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, New Zealand, Italy
I
think Gilas will have more than enough firepower to once again upend its Asian
neighbors, as well as Puerto Rico. Against Mexico and New Zealand, Gilas will
have to make sure that their guards (Castro, Clarkson and Romeo) and wingmen
are in peak form, as these are the positions where we’d have a clear advantage.
Against Italy, it’s the bigs who will make a difference, as Blatche, Fajardo,
de Ocampo and Pingris can take advantage of the relative passiveness of the
Italian big men.
Teams
they’ll struggle against: France, Serbia, Greece, Canada, Czech Republic
Not
surprisingly, these are the teams with legitimate NBA or Euroleague talent. The
Czech Republic may be the easiest of these teams to beat, but 7footer Jan
Vesely and 6-7 point guard Tomas Satoransky will definitely make sure we sweat
blood trying to get past them. Greece and Serbia are both very strong in all
positions and are two of the most skilled teams in the world. Canada and France are choc-full of NBA talent
and we’re not talking about end-of-the-bench NBA players here. We’re talking
about legitimate NBA stars like Tony Parker, Andrew Wiggins, Rudy Gobert, and
Nicolas Batum as well as rotation players like Boris Diaw, Nando de Colo, Cory
Joseph, Anthony Bennett, Evan Fournier, Andrew Nicholson, Nik Stauskas, Kelly
Olynyk and Robert Sacre. Getting past those two teams will be the most
difficult task of all. (The FIBA qualifiers will be on July 5-11, right when
the NBA is on its yearly break, so these NBA players will be available)
HOW
GILAS WINS
Well
first, we’d need the luck of the draw.
With 15 teams being divided into 3 groups, we’re looking at a 5-team
group with the champion getting the Rio ticket. Which means we need to get into
a group with 3 winnable games, and 1 hard game that isn’t France or Canada. So if
Gilas was grouped with Puerto Rico, New Zealand, Italy and Greece, we might
actually have a realistic chance of earning a Rio ticket.
WORST
CASE SCENARIO TEAM VS OPPONENTS
C –
Chunky Andray Blatche/Kelly Williams
PF
–Ranidel de Ocampo/Troy Rosario/ Kevin Ferrer
SF –
Kobe Paras/Matt Ganuelas Rosser/Glenn Khobuntin
SG –
Bobby Ray Parks/Kiefer Ravena
PG –
Jayson Castro/Jimmy Alapag
As stated in an earlier article (read here),
this team is so riddled with holes that it’s difficult to say where we’d have
an advantage over any of the other teams playing.
Teams
they can handle: Japan
Japan
is the only team that realistically, this team can beat. And that would be
because the Japanese would still have no one who can take on Blatche or Castro.
Teams
they’ll struggle against: France, Serbia, Greece, Canada, Czech Republic, Iran,
Mexico, Puerto Rico, New Zealand, Italy
It’s
basically futile to even discuss the chances of the above Gilas team against any
other team in the Olympic qualifiers. Our team will be overmatched at basically
every position, no matter how big our #puso is.
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