Gilas on the right track

January 27, 2010 | Posted by benjie

It has been a while since I did my last post. That was January 12 when I wrote about Marcio Lassiter. I became preoccupied with lots of concerns the last couple of weeks that I even missed to follow every game of the Gilas stint in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Nevertheless, I’m glad that I’m back with benjsports.com and delighted as well that Smart Gilas finished third in the prestigious tournament.

The performance of the developmental team in their recent joust in the gulf city somehow provides a glimpse of where the program is at right now. This program is aimed to restore basketball supremacy in Asia that we Filipinos had been enjoying for decades. It was patterned after the Northern Cement team of the eighties where a foreigner was tasked to do the coaching chores, beefed up with naturalized players and with a financial backing of a mogul with a vast interest in basketball. That formula came up with a gold medal finish in the 1986 ABC, the forerunner of the FIBA-Asia. Had it not been with the political instability right after EDSA I, Northern Cement-backed team should have played in the 1986 World Championship in Madrid, Spain. In short, the formula is effective. That is why, I am confident that Smart Gilas can duplicate the feat of the Northern Cement back in the eighties. And I believe that Gilas is on the right track.