PBA Bubble Impacts Gilas' Preparations for Asia Cup Qualifiers

Roger Pogoy had 45 points last Sunday. Mathew Wright had 36 points the other night. CJ Perez had 30 points on Tuesday. Bobby Ray Parks had 40 points too on Tuesday. These are just some of the high-scoring performances from some of the mainstays of the national team in the first three days of the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Philippine Cup bubble in Clark. 

Unfortunately, Pogoy and company won't be able to do those things for Gilas Pilipinas in the upcoming rounds of the 2021 International Basketball Federation (FIBA) Asia Cup qualifiers which are set to resume next month. With the PBA bubble looking to run until December, that will leave the national team without most of its players who played in Indonesia last February. And that isn't the only problem that the national team program will have to address as interim Gilas Head Coach Mark Dickel is also inside the Clark bubble as the team consultant of the TNT Tropang Giga. And most of the assistant coaches of the national team are also with their respective mother teams which leaves Gilas without a coaching staff. 

In the words of Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas (SBP) Program Director Tab Baldwin who guested in Sports Page, "We don't expect the PBA bubble to be able to be broken in any way. So you know, at this point, we are certainly ruling out the inclusion of PBA players and coaches," He then continued, "That means that we have to either look at players overseas, and that are domiciled overseas, which again are going to be very difficult because they more than likely have schedules going on right now, or look into our college ranks which is probably the most likely and the one that Coach Ryan (Gregorio) and I are spending most of our time working on right now,"

The good news though: several collegiate stars have already committed to play alongside the special Gilas draftees in last year's PBA Rookie Draft led by Isaac Go, Rey Suerte, Allyn Bulanadi, and Mike and Matt Nieto. Included in the list of collegiate standouts who were also given invitations to join the pool last February are Kobe Paras of the University of the Philippines Fighting Maroons, Justine Baltazar of the De La Salle Green Archers, and Dave Ildefonso who is set to make his return to the Ateneo Blue Eagles. 

In conclusion, Baldwin reiterated, "What we want to do is finalize a roster as quickly as we can, and then we'll announce the roster," 

Photo is from FIBA