E-Painters looking forward to a better season

Even though they're still missing a few players from their lineup, the Rain or Shine Elasto Painters are working hard in their preparation for the upcoming season. Part of their preparations was a tune-up game against Gilas Pilipinas where the undermanned Painters lost.

However, head coach Caloy Garcia was not looking at the result but what they could learn from the game.

"I told our players that it's also a good learning process for us specially in the third quarter (when) Gilas played so well and we played poorly. We can look at that and see what we can fix," Garcia added.

Garcia noted that they are still missing seven players from their usual rotation saying: "We're still far from where we want to be but the players who are here are working very hard and that's all I could ask for."

The Painters featured a couple of new faces in the game including former Letran Knight Rey Nambatac, who was the team's seventh pick overall in the 2017 PBA Rookie Draft. They also tested JK Casino of the CEU Scorpions, who was drafted by Phoenix in the fourth round but was left unsigned.

"We're still looking if we can put JK in kasi matalinong point guard but we're still waiting also for Chris (Tiu) to come back pero habang wala siya, tinitignan muna namin si JK.", Garcia said.

Garcia added that the tuneup game was also important to ROS as it's a chance to test the mettle of the younger players.

"Because guys like Chris and Maverick (Ahanmisi) are not here, sina Jerramy King and Ed Daquioag get to play longer and that's good for us because at least they get to develop their good habits."

The coach added that they are retaining the new-look offense they debuted last season while also adding more options into their system.

"We're sticking with our two options on the break: the post trailer and the dribble-drive," Garcia explained. "In the offseason, we want to focus now on our set plays. We're introducing new sets to the players and more ball movement. Nangangapa pa sila but when we ran it right, it looked good so the players are buying into it." will be for the five other slots. With China already in as host, there are four more slots for the taking. Looking back, we must remember that only two Asian countries (Philippines and Iran) made it to the 2014 FIBA World Cup. Ergo, our chances of making it again are better than the past. But then again, everybody else is also thinking of the same thing. Di lang gyud ta mo kumpyansa. Expected to go all out for the four slots are Gilas Pilipinas, Iran, Korea, Japan, Iraq, Lebanon, Qatar, and Kazakhstan. Kaya? Kaya kaayo!

The biggest change of the FIBA World Cup qualifiers is that a national team gets to play in a home-and-away setup, albeit spread in different periods between today and 2019. In this case, Gilas Pilipinas will have played twelve games by February 2019. In such a set-up, there is a need to keep the national team intact in whatever way, even while the PBA season is ongoing. Note that this is the same for the whole world. I can already imagine the U.S. where I’m sure the NBA players aren’t going to leave their pro teams just to play in a qualifier next week. This is why USA Basketball formed a team of non-NBA players to carry the colors of the country, praying that this will be enough to get them to the World Cup (and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics) where the NBA superstars can then take over. In our case, the PBA has agreed to support the national team’s games during these windows and will make players available for practice. If you’re looking for an similar set-up, just look at the Akals. They just played in Nepal this past week with players who play for different PFL teams and others who play overseas (Neil Etheridge and Daisuke Sato). Gilas Pilipinas Coach Chot Reyes has a pool of players from which he’ll choose twelve players to play in a FIBA Asia game. In fact, all players in the pool are reportedly making the trip to Japan, whether or not they make it to the roster for the Japan game. And that’s only the first of the twelve steep and tough steps leading to China 2019.

Let’s join the ride guys. Mark all those windows. Gilas Pilipinas is calling on the country anew to support our bid to make it back to FIBA World Cup. Laban Pilipinas! Puso!