Retooled Japanese squad seeks payback vs Gilas

In Team Japan, Gilas Pilipinas faces an old rival boosted by the addition of a naturalized player, a US-trained Japanese playmaker, the return from an injury of a towering center and, most of all, the system brought in by iconic Argentine coach Julio Lamas.

Naturalized player Ira Brown, NBA D-League veteran Yuki Togashi and tall Takeuchi twins Joji and Kosuke (back from an injury) are among the aces in the Japanese cast trimmed down to 14 by Lamas in the homestretch of their preparation for their game against the Filipinos at the Komazawa Gymnasium in Tokyo on Friday.

Like Gilas coach Chot Reyes, Lamas will decide on his Final 12 on the eve of the match — among eight games in the opening window of the FIBA Asia World Cup qualifying series.

Explosive wingmen Yudai Baba, Makoto Hiejima and Daiki Tanaka, sweet-shooting Naoto Tsuji and veteran frontcourt player Atsuya Ota are the other top candidates for Team Japan with high expectation of improvement under Lamas, a seven-time Argentine League Coach of the Year who called the shots for Argentina in the 1998 and the 2014 editions of the World Cup and in the 2012 Olympics.

The other Japanese hopefuls are Naoki Uto, Naoya Kumagae, Takatoshi Furukawa, Tenketsu Harimoto and Ryusei Shinoyama.

Ten are holdovers from their team that placed ninth in the recent FIBA Asia Cup in Beirut, Lebanon. Hiejima, Ota, Tanaka, Furukawa and Joji Takeuchi, meanwhile, are holdovers all the way from the 2015