BY REYNALD MAGALLON
Gilas Pilipinas head coach Tim Cone is sticking to his guns as the team flies for its European trip with only the 11 players available for the FIBA Olympic Qualifying tournament.
Cone revealed that plans to try fill in the spot of Scottie Thompson, who was ruled out from the tournament due to a nagging back injury, had been scrapped already due to time concerns but stressed that the manpower was already enough to battle in the OQT.
“We’re going 11-strong,” said the veteran mentor following the Nationals’ 74-64 victory over Taiwan Mustangs in their send-off friendly match on Monday, June 24 at the PhilSports Arena.
Cone said he doesn’t feel like their playing shorthanded and believes he has enough pieces to work on for the tournament in Riga where Gilas is set to go up against world no.6 Latvia and No.21 Georgia.
“I don’t feel we’re shorthanded at all. I’m not a guy who plays 11 or 12 guys anyway. I’m a really 8 or 9 man rotation,” said Cone.
“The reason you have 12 guys is not necessarily for the game but to have 12 guys in practice—to have extra bodies in practice and in case somebody goes down. So I don’t feel shorthanded at all,” he pointed out.
Cone though isn’t entirely stranger playing and utilizing an incomplete roster, having done it in the FIBA Asia Cup qualifiers when he only had 10 players in the active lineup against Chinese Taipei in February.
Even against the Mustangs, while all of the players were fielded, only eight of them reached 10-minutes on the court with June Mar Fajardo, Chris Newsome, Justin Brownlee, Dwight Ramos, and Kai Sotto getting the huge chunk of minutes with over 20 minutes each.
But that doesn’t mean that Cone is not missing Thompson in the roster.
“It’s not that we can’t find a replacement for him, it’s just that we’re missing him. Nobody—anybody we’d get is not gonna replace Scottie. That’s just a fact of life,” said Cone.
“But we don’t feel shorthanded. We talked to 11 guys. They’re 11 strong and they feel we’re okay. People are making a meltdown here. It’s not that big of a deal that we’re just 11-strong,” he stressed.
