Tab Baldwin Tempering Expectation for Youth-laden Gilas Pilipinas

The current Gilas Pilipinas pool is considered as the youngest national basketball team assembled in recent years and many basketball enthusiasts are peculiar on the end goal that this young group of players is up against an elite competition in the world tournament.

Gilas Pilipinas Program Director Tab Baldwin addresses the hundred-million dollar question in Hoops Life, an online show in the facebook page of Smart Sports.

“That is a very important question and it’s a question that everybody deserves an honest answer too. And I think most people would have an expectation that the honest answer would be ‘Oh, let’s just put a good showing there.”

Host country and world No. 5 Serbia and No. 19 Dominican Republic stands in the way of the all-amateur squad in the Olympic Qualifying Tournament’s qualification phase. A tough mountain to climb so the multi-titled coach keeps it real and added:

“I can’t recall in my 20 years of international basketball experience and 40 years of coaching and watching what’s going on in the world, I can’t recall any amateur team ever competing in elite international tournaments.”

However, it doesn’t mean that Coach Tab is not thinking about winning.

“This is my approach as a coach. I don’t know if we will win, and we are not going out there to win. We are going out there to win more possession than our opponents are and to take those possessions one possession at a time. And when we run into a scenario where our team can’t score, that’s when the coaching staff steps in and make adjustments and tries to help the players find a better route towards winning each possession. That’s how our coaching staff is gonna construct, we’re gonna try to construct victories in every game that we play,”

The OQT ticket is a gift made from heaven as we unexpectedly barged in the competition after New Zealand pulled out of the tournament due to the threat of Covid-19 early this year.