RoS coach Caloy Garcia: ‘The only way we can be happy is by winning’

STRAIGHT to the point, Rain or Shine coach Caloy Garcia answered all questions surrounding trade rumors involving some of his key players and addressed queries on why James Yap is being benched during crucial stretches in some of the games of the Elasto Painters.

“We want to keep everybody happy, but the only way we can be happy is by winning, not because players are not seeing more minutes,” Mr. Garcia told

BusinessWorld in an interview.

Fans questioned the rationale behind Mr. Yap not being utilized fully in some of the games of the Elasto Painters. A video was even shown to Garcia during one of the huddles where the soft-spoken mentor telling the two-time Most Valuable Player that he’s going to be replaced by Beau Belga.

“What people don’t know is that James is coming off an injury and I even told him that he still doesn’t have the lift each time he goes to the basket. He admitted that to me,” added Mr. Garcia. “But me and James are in good terms and I have no plans of trading him and he’s not requesting to be traded, either.”

Mr. Garcia, however, didn’t deny the fact that guard Jericho Cruz has been put on the trading block, but as long as negotiations aren’t finalized yet, he should remain committed to play for the Elasto Painters.

“I told the players that we just have to be professional about it,” added Mr. Garcia. “Every time we play, we have to put the effort because the team owners pay their salaries and that’s the only way we can repay them.”

“Jericho really wants to go back to Coach Yeng (Guiao), but I told him we have a job. There’s no security that you can be traded. It’s hard to trade a player without getting the player you wanted in return, so I just told him that the only way you can be traded is if you play good. If you play good, you can get something good in return.”

For Mr. Garcia, the issues are more like a challenge for him as a coach and as a result, the Elasto Painters have won back- to- back games to bolster their chances of moving to the playoffs.

“It’s more of a challenge on my side, to try to get these players motivated. I made a mistake when we played Kia because they were not motivated at that time,” he added. “I hope our consistency would continue.” —