MANILA, 5 July — Suddenly, national team coach Jong Uichico feels deeply worried and bothered, if not disappointed.
So how would the Philippine team fare if the Asian Games is held today, huh?
“To be honest, I feel we won’t figure in the medal race if the Asiad were held at this point,” conceded Uichico, who is hoping to bring the Asian basketball gold back to the Philippines which last won it 40 years ago in Jakarta, Indonesia. “There are still a lot of things to fix. We’re not yet fully ready.”
The brilliant bench tactician was, indeed, brutally frank about it, readily admitting that the Fil-Am-backstopped national squad won’t be competitive enough, short of saying they might find themselves being beaten black and blue by their formidable opponents.
Formed a bit too late, the fourth team the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) will be sending to Pusan, South Korea, this September has yet to fully digest the system being instituted by Uichico.
“When we lost to Ginebra (two weeks ago), I was still happy because I felt the players performed their roles to the latter,” said Uichico after the Nationals’ 74-62 win over San Miguel in the PBA Commissioner’s Cup. “But this time around, I felt very frustrated even though we won. We’re inconsistent, we lack the intensity and played no defense. To sum it up, we played with no heart.”
Still, Uichico, who took over the head coaching job when Jacobs suffered a stroke last year, said it’s not yet time to push the panic button.
“I don’t think it’s necessary to panic. I know they can play with intensity and heart,” said Uichico. “The problem is if they don’t want to play with such intensity.”
The Philippine team has long returned home from Italy carrying with them rich experience and optimism in preparations for the country’s campaign in Pusan.
The Filipinos went up against the taller and heftier European teams. They savored what European basketball was all about which can help immensely in their preparations for the Pusan tournament.
The national team used the journey to determine whether the 15-man national team was fit and ready with barely three months left before the competition.
It marked a major part of their preparation in the country’s ambitious bid to regain the Asiad basketball gold from long-time champions China.
Making up the Philippine team are PBA stars Jeffrey Cariaso, Kenneth Duremdes, Dennis Espino, Boy Fernandez, Rudy Hatfield, Dondon Hontiveros, Danny Ildefonso, Chris Jackson, Eric Menk, Mick Pennisi, Olsen Racela, Andy Seigle, Danny Seigle, Noy Castillo and Asi Taulava.
Castillo, who is still recovering from an injury, did not join the trip.
“Except for a few injuries, the players are in good shape, maybe not in tiptop shape since it’s way too early for the Asian Games, but at least in good shape,” said Uichico.
With 6-9 giants like Taulava, Andy Seigle and Pennisi as well as 6-6 Espino, 6-6 Danny Seigle, 6-5 Menk and 6-5 Ildefonso, the Philippine team is the tallest, and perhaps the most talented ever assembled for the Asian Games.
Despite the blowout defeats, the national team came home as proud winners confident that the lessons in the Italian tour will go a long way in bolstering their chances of winning back the gold in the prestigious quadrennial regional games.
The Philippines played four games — an exhibition in Milan and three outings at a four-nation invitational tournament organized by the Federazione Italiana Pallacanestro (FIP) in the resort town of Sondrio.
The national team, backstopped by nine Fil-foreign players, capped its stint — its first exposure abroad before the Pusan Games — on a bright note with a 100-98 victory over Ukraine.
Uichico said the Italian campaign was an eye-opener because “It exposed the Filipinos’ inability to play a sustained all-out effort for 40 minutes because of the breakneck speed in the team-oriented international game.”
Consultant Paul Howard, who flew in from Los Angeles to help out as an outsider looking in, said the national team must work harder in physical conditioning and play more like a college squad with a stress on the pass-screen offense and a de-emphasis on the one-on-one professional style.
Uichico and Howard agreed there were several positives points to build on from the Italian trip as the team improved game after game.
“We were humiliated in our first game after we lost to Italy by 43 points, but instead of feeling sorry for ourselves, we came back and worked harder to improve,” said the head of the national delegation, Renauld Barrios, the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) executive director. “Every day, we saw improvement. Not too many people realized that the first Italy game was also our first game as a team.”
Barrios said he couldn’t be prouder of the national squad, which will be seeking to dethrone long-time champions China and bring the Asian basketball title back to the Philippines.
Project director Bobong Velez said the trip was a learning experience.
“No regrets,” he said. “We were beaten but winning here was not our ultimate goal. This was a stepping stone for the real objective in the Asian Games.”
The players took a beating on the court from bigger and superior opponents from Europe but never lost focus in setting their sights on the Asian Games.
“We should do really well in Pusan as long as we play to our potential and stay healthy,” said Cariaso.
Fernandez, for his part, said the journey made the players closer.
“It strengthened our friendship,” he said. “The desire to win the gold is always on our mind.”
Menk said the team’s assets are its competitiveness and fighting spirit.
“We’re very competitive at practice so we expect to carry that over to the Asian Games,” he said.
Menk said he knows the competition will be tough in Pusan but is confident of the team’s chances.
In Pusan, the Chinese would still be the biggest test in the country’s bid to reclaim the basketball gold which the Filipinos last won in 1962 in Jakarta.
The Philippines also won the cage championships in the inaugural games in 1951 in New Delhi: in 1956 in Manila; and in 1958 in Tokyo.
Since 1986, the Chinese have become almost unbeatable in Asia particularly in the games where they held the crown with iron hands for more than two decades now.
The task of beating China and Korea — the traditional title contenders — and even Lebanon — an emerging power in the region — is formidable.
Since the PBA, Asia’s first play-for-pay league, was tasked by the Basketball Association of the Philippines (BAP) with forming the national team in the last three editions of the Asian Games, it has won one silver and one bronze medal.
A team coached by superstar Robert Jaworski lost to the powerhouse Chinese in the finals of the 1990 Asian Games in Beijing, while the squad handled by Norman Black failed to win a medal after finishing fourth in the 1994 games in Hiroshima.
The Centennial Team coached by Tim Cone, after months of rigid training at home and abroad, won the bronze medal in Bangkok in 1998.
It will mark the fourth time since the coming of open basketball that a PBA selection will wear the national tri-colors in the Asian Games.
And this year, many see the country to have the best chance of regaining Asian glory with the presence of so many Fil-Am talent that can surely size up against the bigger Chinese and the equally dangerous Koreans.
Uichico pinpointed another major problem facing his wards: familiarity of the opposition.
Although the national team coaching staff has done a remarkable scouting abroad, Uichico admitted their efforts were limited.
“Our scouting reports were confined only to the individual players and not the entire team of our prospective targets. So basically, we don’t know how they work together,” Uichico said.
Just recently, assistant coach Allan Caidic, upon returning from a spying mission in Japan, said the nationals can easily beat Japan.
A four-time Asian Games campaigner, Caidic said the Philippine team remains far from being beaten by the Japanese team in Pusan.
“I do believe Filipino players are still better,” said Caidic who, however, warned the Nationals of being too overconfident so as to avert being upset by Japan. “Japanese basketball is no longer mechanical. It’s sort of become Americanized, too.”
Together with chief scout Binky Favis, Caidic was sent in by Uichico to Japan for a reconnaissance mission in a bid to better draw up a battle plan for the national team and bolster the Philippines’ chances of winning back the Asian basketball gold.
The Filipino “moles” stayed in Tokyo for five days to scout potential members of the Japanese national team.
They came back home carrying with them a vital report on the Japanese’s preparations for the quadrennial regional games where they are also considered as hot title contenders.
They had first-hand accounts of how the Japanese play, and immediately, their impression was that the Philippines’ brand of basketball is still better than the Japanese’s.
Caidic, however, said the Nationals can’t afford to be complacent as the Japanese are capable of pulling off a surprise if ever they find themselves in a collision course in Pusan.
They watched four games of the semifinal round of the current Japan Basketball League and video-taped actions of the top stars of the league who could well comprise the Japanese team.
Caidic said they spotted among others old Japanese team mainstays Kenichi Sako, Takehiko Orimo and Mekaeru Takahashi — or Michael Dorsey — and new sensation Japanese naturalized Eric McArthur.
Caidic reported that McArthur, a bulky 6-foot-6 player, led the Aisin Seahorses to the championship in the recent All-Japan League.
McArthur and the Seahorses, however, failed to make it past the semis of the ongoing Japanese tournament featuring imports that included former PBA reinforcements Tony Lang, JR Henderson and David Booth, Caidic added. Uichico is planning to spy the Arab teams, particularly the unpredictable Lebanon.
Lebanon, among the teams expected to crowd for the Asiad gold medal, is reportedly recruiting three Lebanese-American to beef up its lineup.
The Lebanon report prompted Uichico and his staff to step up their scouting of the opponents.
Lebanon finished behind perennial champions China in the Asian Basketball Confederation (ABC) with a team backstopped by two Lebanese-Americans, Joseph William Vogel and Richard Hallet.
Vogel is a 6-foot-11, 245-pound center who played for Lebanon during the 1999 McDonald’s Championships won by the San Antonio Spurs of the National Basketball Association (NBA).
However, it is still unclear if the two are the same reinforcements Lebanon is pursuing to boost its chances of winning the title in Pusan.
The national mentor said monitoring the former Russian states is what the coaching staff has a hard time doing.
“Right now, the best thing we have is the fact that there are club tournaments. But the players for the national team are usually scattered in different clubs so we don’t know where to scout their national team as a team,” said Uichico.
Uichico’s wariness for the former Russian states lies in the fact that Kazakhstan nearly pulled off a pair of upsets against the Philippines in the 1998 Asiad, with the Centennial Team barely escaping for a third-place finish.
China and Korea, the traditional pre-tournament favorites, have usually taken the top two slots in the quadrennial games, but Japan, the Philippines, the former Russian states and Middle Eastern countries are expected to offer stiffer opposition this time around.
“Right now, all we can rely on are tapes from previous tournaments where these teams played. But we want a fresher look at them as much as possible before the Asian Games begin,” he explained.
“I can’t say if China is beatable or not,” said Uichico. “Their size is dominating — they’ve got those two seven-footers. But we’ve got a fighting chance. We just have to plan our attack very well.”
In keeping with the promise of leaving no stone unturned in its bid to regain glory in the Asian Games, Uichico vows to intensify the Philippines’ scouting mission abroad.
The RP coaching staff has put its scouting mission in motion while at the same time gearing up the national buildup at home before the actual campaign in Pusan.
The PBA has earmarked at least 20 million pesos for the formation, preparation and actual participation of the national team to the Asiad.
This was agreed upon by the members of the PBA board for as long as the pro league’s expenses do not exceed the budget used for its 1998 Asiad campaign in Bangkok.
Close to 24 million pesos was spent three years ago as part of the national team’s preparations, including its stint in the PBA Centennial Cup and an inter-state tour of US where the nationals went up against tough collegiate squads.
The PBA is spending more on scouting the opposition — a very crucial factor to win the elusive gold.
Likewise, the PBA said the coaching staff will work doubly hard on scouting, stressing that they will send people to spy on the maneuvers of the Filipinos’ opponents.
PBA Commissioner Jun Bernardino wants every team considered a threat to the Filipinos scouted, including Kazakhstan and the other former Soviet republics, vastly-improved Lebanon, and of course perennial contenders China, Korea and Japan.
The scouting will be done especially in international tournaments where the Philippines is not participating — like the World Basketball Championship scheduled in Indiana in August. China and Lebanon would represent Asia.
The tournament high up in the coaching staff’s mind is the World Basketball Championship in Indianapolis next month, where China and Lebanon will be seen in action.
“We must have some of our scouts there since we know that those who would compete there would most likely be our opponents in Pusan,” Uichico said.
