RAJKO TOROMAN, cool and calculating as ever, wrote a prescription for the Philippine men’s basketball team—go for athletic players.
“Basketball is going more [toward] the athletic possibilities of the players, shooting possibilities. That’s how it’s going now,” Toroman told a coaches’ podcast over the weekend.
Toroman was the pioneering coach of the Gilas Pilipinas program, having recruited the best and the brightest from the collegiate ranks during his term at the national team. He trained the team for at least three years and although the expected results weren’t met, the Serbian’s achievement were considered modest in terms of the products borne out of the squad.
Toroman, who is now plying his trade with the Indonesia national men’s team, told the same podcast that size, and not only height, now matters in basketball.
“Size will be very important, but not just size,” Toroman said.
Toroman was more composed with his answers, unlike his predecessor at Gilas, American-New Zealand Tab Baldwin, who was bolder and found himself in the receiving end of Filipino coaches ire following his critical comments on local basketball, including the Philippine Basketball Association.
Toroman said the national team consider the European brand as one of the models to learn from.
“You cannot copy all these tactical things they do in Europe, but you can see what you can use with your players,” he said.
The Serbian, who molded and coached Iran to the Beijing 2008 Olympics, also pitied the Philippines for having gone tall despite the change in style in world basketball.
“[The Philippines] is very unlucky. Because when they got the big guys, the basketball went small,” Toroman said. “You have [June Mar] Fajardo, Kai Sotto…but the teams in Europe are not using the big guys. They are going with small ball.”
Toroman’s Gilas finished fourth in the 2011 Fiba Asia championship to narrowly miss a ticket to London 2012. That squad—bannered by Jvee Casio, Chris Tiu, Marc Barroca, Fil-foreign players Chris Lutz and Marcio Lassiter and his only legitimate big man Japeth Aguilar and reinforced by American Marcus Douthit—lacked ceiling when the trend leaned on tall players,.
Toroman said that the current has plenty of options for ceiling, naming among others from Fajardo, Sotto, Greg Slaughter and JP Erram.
But rather than capitalizing on height, he said Gilas should scout or train agile players who could play multiple roles.