Continuing their relentless quest to finally earn a spot and qualify for the next Olympics, Gilas Coach Chot Reyes has now assembled a 17-man roster that possesses something that the previous National Teams fairly lacked: height.
With the current additions of Ateneo standout 7-footer Greg Slaughter, priced PBA rookie 6’10” Jun Mar Fajardo, and the returning 6’9” Japeth Aguilar, getting injected on the current lineup of the RP Basketball Team which is now averaging a decent height of 6’4” ½ – the tallest team in local basketball history – hoping to earn better results on the upcoming FIBA Asia en route to a prestigious slot to play for the next Olympics that will take place at Rio de Janeiro in Brazil come 2016.
It’s a been a glaring deficiency that the Philippines’ lack of height has been a major factor on making the final push to make it to the finals of the FIBA Asia – the Olympics even. Though we are still considered by most teams as legit basketball threat in the Asian region and the most dominant team on the South East Asia’s rim, we can’t still get through over taller and powering players of the more vertically blessed teams like Jordan, Iran, and Asian powerhouse China. We merely rely on our three-point shooting and sneaky fast breaks to make up for our deficit in height.
With only the Filipino-naturalized and often governing big man Marcus Douthit manning the paint from both sides of the court, and with only Sonny Thoss serving as sound backup, our local team finds it hard to balance the flow of the game, especially when the opponents gets the better hand of Douthit, and can easily sway the outcome of the game exposing our gap on the defensive end especially on the low block and hitting the boards effectively.
That height discrepancy can now be erased if ever the 3 big man additions of Aguilar, Slaughter, and Fajardo make the final cut of the 15-man roster of Gilas, which will represent our country in the coming FIBA-Asia qualifiers.
So far, the Smart Gilas Basketball team is consisted of: Jimmy Alapag, Larry Fonacier, Ranidel De Ocampo, Ryan Reyes, Jason Castro, Jared Dillinger, and Kelly Williams of Talk’N’Text, Gary David and Japeth Aguilar of Globalport, Rain or Shine’s Gabe Norwood and Jeff Chan, Marc Pingris of San Mig Coffee, Alaska’s Sonny Thoss, Ginebra’s LA Tenorio and Petron’s Jun Mar Fajardo. Completing the pool are big men Marcus Douthit and Ateneo’s Greg Slaughter.
