By REYNALD MAGALLON
Gilas Pilipinas may be without a pure point guard in its lineup for the Olympic Qualifying tournament but head coach Tim Cone was hardly worried, believing that he has enough talent in his roster to make up for the absence of Scottie Thompson.
The veteran mentor said he’s looking at the trio of combo guards in Dwight Ramos, Chris Newsome and CJ Perez to step up and fill in the void at the point guard spot and the three have been impressive so far.
“We feel Dwight is capable. New is obviously very capable. And I’m really pleasantly surprised with CJ. CJ’s handling and seeing our offense really, really well,” Cone said of the trio.
Gilas actually got a feel of how to play without Thompson in the lineup during the team’s 74-64 victory over the Taiwan Mustangs on Monday, June 24.
In that game, the 6-foot-4 Ramos took over Thompson’s point guard spot to form a tall and long starting five that featured Calvin Oftana as a shooting guard, Justin Browlee at the three spot and June Mar Fajardo and Kai Sotto at the frontline.
Ramos looked comfortable in his role with 19 points to show while Newsome and Perez who mainly served as relievers provided quality minutes off the bench.
Justin Brownlee also helped out in facilitating the offense, evident with 15 assists out of the entire team’s 23.
“We’re going to have Dwight to help us out on the backcourt. He played the wing for us when we had Scottie, but he’s moving to the backcourt. He gives us great size. And you know, he’s still capable of scoring from that position,” Cone commented on Ramos.
The veteran mentor doesn’t see any problems in utilizing the players, often playing at the shooting guard spots in their club teams, as point guards, noting that having a pure point guard wasn’t really a necessity to run the triangle offense.
“We don’t play a pure point guard in our system… If you look at the triangle over the years, we didn’t really use a pure point guard,” Cone pointed out.
“Even LA is not a pure point guard in our system, Johnny Abarrientos wasn’t a pure point guard in our system, where we have a lot of single high, dribble drive. It’s different for us,” he added.
