Gilas Pilipinas’ improbable quest to reach the Olympic men’s basketball tournament for the first time since 1972 may have come to an end on Saturday — but they depart Latvia two days later than initially expected, and with their heads held high.
A 71-60 loss to Brazil in the semifinals of the Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Riga ended Gilas’ dream of booking an unlikely ticket to Paris, but they arguably exceeded all expectations from the time they opened their campaign with a 89-80 upset of the world No. 6 hosts — their first victory over European opposition in 64 years.
Defeats to Georgia and Brazil may have followed but, after a disappointing showing at last year’s FIBA World Cup, the displays over the past few days have proven that Gilas do have what it takes to compete at the highest level.
And while coach Tim Cone acknowledges the achievement, and how it would have brought much joy to the basketball-crazy Filipino population, he believes they should not buy too much into their own hype or rest on their laurels.
“We didn’t expect to be here but, once we’re here, we expected to win,” Cone said in his postgame news conference after the loss to Brazil. “So it’s an incredible disappointment for us.
“We’re not going to jump up and down and say ‘yay, we did our thing and everybody was proud of us’. Hopefully that doesn’t get into our mindset.
“We need to keep pushing at getting better.”
Following the below-par results at last year’s World Cup — on home soil, no less — Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas handed the Gilas reins to Cone, who stated his preference to have a smaller pool of players that would feature together more regularly and subsequently gain higher levels of familiarity and cohesion.
After Gilas then went on to impressively claim an Asian Games gold medal last October, it is unsurprising that Cone has continued to put his faith largely in the same players.
When asked about this continuity, he replied: “The whole part of this particular program, which is different from what we had at the World Cup, is the fact that we’re going to hopefully keep these guys together over the next three to four years going into the next World Cup.
“It’s hard to talk about this right after you lose but it’s a growth experience for us. It’s kind of like a ‘now we know’ moment.
“We know we can compete. How can we get that next step in which we can get a little bit better to not just complete, but win?
“Playing this kind of tournaments, you’re playing three games in four days — it just gets harder and harder every game.
“These are the things we’ll need to adjust to.”