FORGET about Estonia and its pocket tournament. Consider its three huge loses a nightmare. Those seemed like a decade ago.
Tell the neighborhood it’s time to wake up. Focus on the present, and look at Gilas Pilipinas now.
In Taipei, playing only in its second tournament together as a team of aspirants, the barely month-old infant swaddled in the hands of Tab Baldwin in delivering a gutsy, gritty and absolutely marvelous performance.
It was as if Baldwin has touched it with a magic wand, and all that was flawed and fragile about the team that had walked into a veritable slaughterhouse in Tannin barely two weeks back has been turned into the armor and clout of a true warrior.
These warriors, with the “puso” mantra screaming in their brains, are lighting up the Jones Cup like it has become their private game preserve.
They are doing it without the missing big man June Mar Fajardo, and despite the absence of Andray Blatche’s hot shooting, size and defense.
One is resting a foot injury to let it heal; the other, in mourning, had to fly this week to his American hometown to bury a dear, departed uncle.
But to see Gilas play through its first four games, these may not seem like the gaping holes over which die-hard fans fretted, fearing they might undo a talented bunch Baldwin has had to make do with. Look how much talent, raw but stunning, he’s got.
Right in Gilas’s opening game, there were moments of brilliance by two newcomers that electrified fans in the gallery and back home, catching the action on television.
Calvin Abueva, the Beast, was rebounding like a 6-foot-9, although making a few rookie mistakes, and Terrence Romeo was leading a rapid-fire, quick-moving offense, rattling in baskets off impossibly angled drives, throwing treys like mad, waltzing on the edge of individualism, but pulled back just in time to swim and flow in Baldwin’s disciplined system.
That opening triumph over host Taipei was a shot fired like in an insurrection. No one was going to take them for granted anymore, much less thumb them down.
Even as Baldwin counseled caution, saying it was not time to be carried away and there were many things to improve on, he was blown away by Romeo’s gutsy play.
“Terrence is not a fluke,” Baldwin said. “He can play the way he played tonight.” The other energizer, the Beast, didn’t surprise him either, calling him a “a ball of energy,” a “solar energy.”
Next, the Filipinos had a great run against the Koreans for three quarters. In the fourth, the reigning Asian Games champions showed their championship poise, making Gilas lose theirs for nearly six minutes of the final canto.
The Filipinos, pressed by the relentlessly defending Koreans, went back to individualist play—a weakness that Baldwin knows he had to check.
I absolutely admired the Gilas boys when they played the Russians, the bullies from up north, supposedly unbeatable, but absolutely boorish and lacking confidence against a smaller team that refused to back off.
The Filipinos took in the punishment from Spartak Primorye, who drew blood literally in the first two minutes. An intentional Russian elbow dug into Sonny Thoss’s head, opening a gash that took a few stitches to close.
This was a mistake by the Russians, trying to rough up the Filipinos. Even if their elbows were armed with nukes, no way they could have bullied the Gilas warriors.
This was the message of Gilas’s benefactor, Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas head honcho Manuel V. Pangilinan.
Baldwin knows his boys. With obvious pride he was in a feisty mood himself.
When the game was halted in the first half as both benches emptied during a tense faceoff between Romeo and Alexei Goliakhov, he stood up to confront tournament officials.
Baldwin acknowledged it wasn’t a polished performance and defensively the Filipinos were tough.
But he saw something his boys hadn’t displayed in the game against the Koreans.
“We played within our roles pretty well,” he said, “The shooters making their shots and the rebounders getting their rebounds.”
They repeated that on Wednesday. In their fourth hard-crunching game in a row, they smothered Japan.
It was the Gilas defense that stood out. In the fourth quarter, Japan could not buy a decent basket for half the time.
It was all the room the Filipinos needed, and their shooters got hot as if on cue.
Romeo sparkled, rattling in sixteen points, but it was Moala Tautuaa’s overpowering display that ripped the game wide open.
His two two-handed slams, scored on breakaways that displayed his fine footwork and, better, his great sense of positioning, sparked a killing 20-4 run by the Filipinos.
As if the wind was taken off its sail, Japan folded after muscling the Filipinos with a defense that tied the game at 44-all.
It was even better than their demolition of the Russians. In Baldwin’s eyes it was “the best basketball we played.”
Their best could be better. They have to get better, Baldwin said, “because we are not good enough yet to win the International Basketball Federation (Fiba) Asia.”
They were scheduled to play Iran on Thursday in a match where a win would give the Filipinos the inside track to the Jones Cup championship.
I love this team. It has sprouted many heroes, bred in adversity, but dealing with its crisis on its own, with no thanks to the high priests of the pro league.
I was doubtful that Gilas would grow dramatically so soon. That’s what talent when combined with determination and good coaching could do.
If they remain on that trajectory, and pray that no one among its new heroes would be claimed by injury, we will see a fighting team in China in the Fiba Asian this month.
The Jones Cup is supposed to be a trial for this team. From the way it looks, not anymore. It has been transformed into a quest to be the best among the eight teams playing.