Gilas Pilipinas coach Tim Cone had repeatedly emphasized that 2024 was a trial year for the national team program. For one, it was only at the start of the year when he accepted the unforgiving and thankless job of steering the helm for Gilas – a team that will always be under the watchful eyes of this basketball-crazy nation – which depending on the outcome of the games, could be his greatest supporters or his most vicious critics. But looking back at the events that transpired for the entire year of Gilas, 2024 hardly looked like a year of experiments and trial anderrors.
In just under 10 months since Cone’s appointment as the national team coach, Gilas was finally winning. To be fair, it also did before, with Reyes a decade back in time and with Tab Baldwin just a few years ago. The difference probably is that, regardless of the outcome of the games, Gilas, for the first time in a while, has finally had some sense of direction.
And this year’s feats speak for itself. Not a few raised their eyebrows when Cone named his pool. A lean 12-man lineup with Japeth Aguilar and Mason Amos serving as the backups.
It was far from the usual long list of big name players all fighting for their spots on the team. Perhaps the golden conquest of Gilas during the Asian Games in 2023 had helped Cone unlock a trick. He values cohesion, familiarity, the shared experiences and accumulated preparations as pillars of the program.
He wanted a tight-knit group that would live for one anothe.