After
getting shellacked for two straight games (against Turkey and Italy), Gilas
Pilipinas finally accomplished two things: prune their pool to a final 12
lineup for the Olympic Qualifying tournament and get a win.
Gilas
Pilipinas faced a Chinese team lacking their three biggest guns in Yi Jianlian,
teen sensation and recent NBA draftee Zhou Qi and Guo Ailun. Still, a win is a
win and Gilas can take heart in the fact that China can never take them for
granted ever again.
That
being said, here are four thoughts from that game:
Gilas can win, even with their main guns
having bad games.
Andray
Blatche had a double-double (14points, 12 rebounds) but he was a horrible,
horrible 4-19 from the field (4-13 from 2pt land, 0-6 from beyond the arc).
Jayson Castro was able to get inside the paint numerous times but still seemed
to have a mental block against the Chinese big men, as his shots just couldn’t
find the bottom of the net (2-7 from the field). Still, the silver lining of
their bad games is that other Gilas players stepped up to contribute and help
get the win. But make no mistake; Gilas Pilipinas can’t afford to have either Blatche
nor play as bad as this against teams like France or New Zealand.
Fajardo may be a Gilas12 shoo in but he
hasn’t shown why.
The
back-to-back PBA MVP was one of two supposed shoo-ins to the team, the other
being Andray Blatche (offhand, I think Jayson Castro was an even more sure
shoo-in than Fajardo). But looking at the last three guys, you have to wonder
how Fajardo is contributing to the team. He hasn’t been rebounding all that
well, nor has he been scoring as an interior complement to Blatche. Truth be
told, FIBA World Cup Fajardo was much more effective than two-time-PBA-MVP
Fajardo. We can only hope that he shows his true worth in the OQT.
Jeff Chan and Terence Romeo just showed why
they’re in the Gilas12.
With
Blatche and Castro having bad games, Gilas needed someone else to step up. Good
thing the Negros Sniper, Jeff Chan, and the Ankle Breaker, Terence Romeo were
more than up to the task. Chan was perfect from the field (4-4, 2-2 from 3pt
land) to finish with 10 points while Romeo was 6-10 (3-4 from three) to finish
with 18. But what made their presence even more important was that China was
unable to exploit either on defense. Several times, the Chinese three the ball
to the man Chan or Romeo was guarding and the duo were able to force a long shot
or a bad shot almost every time.
The system works…when they use it.
You
can actually see when the Gilas players lose discipline and revert to their
one-on-one skills. When Castro, Romeo,
Blatche or Norwood was able to facilitate the offense, you could practically
see the system purring, more often than not resulting in a bucket. But when the
Chinese are able to force them to stop passing and start pounding the rock
while looking for a teammate, everyone just stops and watches the guy with the ball
do his thing. Too often, this resulted in Blatche taking a hurried shot (hence
his bad shooting percentage).
What we should take away from this:
Hope.
While time is no longer our friend, we have progressed far enough for me to say
that defeating France and New Zealand won’t be as big a shock as it would have
been 2 years ago. In fact, with this team now, I’d say we’d be able to beat
last year’s Chinese team. But the past is the past and we can only look to the
future. If we can get past France in our bracket, then I think we stand a good
chance of giving Canada (my bet from the other side of the bracket) a run for their
money for the lone Rio ticket.
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