Gilas Pilipinas and the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas had not discussed plans of bringing in additional players for the coming Olympic Qualifying Tournament.
And head coach Tim Cone has no plans either of adding a few more naturalized player prospects with his long-time player Justin Brownlee on board.
“Because of preparation issues and availability of players, we agreed with the stakeholders that we would keep a 12-man line up,” wrote Cone in a Viber message to PinoyStep.com. “We don’t foresee expanding the line up or creating a pool of players.”
That pool of players consist the most important element in competing in major international tournaments, just like the coming Olympic Qualifying Tournament in July in Latvia where Gilas shoot for a possible berth in the Paris Games this year — a naturalized player.
The issue on naturalized player is probably a sensitive topic to discuss and Cone defers to talk about getting any player involved outside of Brownlee, his long-time, beloved import.
Cone is known to keeping players he loves and much like Sean Chambers who has played his entire Philippine Basketball Association career under the American mentor, the only coach to win the grand slam twice has no plans of bringing somebody else with Brownlee back on board.
Brownlee played in the first window of the FIBA Asia Cup Qualifiers last month after he was cleared to play by the International Basketball Federation more than three months since testing positive for cannabis , a banned substance under WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency).
Instead, Cone wants to make this group in playing better as a team with Brownlee leading the way.
“We have such a long way to go and that’s hard to have an assessment at this point. Perhaps, when we play in Europe in July, we’ll have a better feel,” added Cone.
