Gilas head coach Tim Cone has a big problem. He has limited time to get the national team ready for the coming FIBA World Cup Asia qualifying window late this month. Then, there’s another FIBA window scheduled in November. The challenge is for Gilas to pick up enough wins to qualify for the World Cup in Qatar next year since at the moment, the team is not in the magic circle of eight to advance. Another challenge is to defend the Asian Games championship in Aichi-Nagoya on Sept. 19-Oct. 4. Host Japan is mustering its forces to wrest the crown with NBA players Rui Hachimura, Yuki Kawamura and Yuta Watanabe leading the charge alongside naturalized player Josh Hawkinson and crack point guard Yuki Togashi. China is another threat as it was dethroned by Gilas in the previous Asian Games and is on a mission of redemption.
What’s bothering Cone even more than the opposition is finding out who’s available to play. Kai Sotto is clearly the best Filipino big man today but apparently, playing for Gilas isn’t a priority. He claims to be pursuing his NBA dream but didn’t play in the recent NBA Summer League. Sotto is mulling the possibility of joining a US NCAA D1 team under a rule that allows pros to play in college if within five years from high school graduation. He’s now 24 with experience in the Australian and Japanese pro leagues. How feasible is this route to the NBA for Sotto? There is talk that Sotto will agree to play for Gilas if the price is right, meaning he won’t settle for the usual allowance given to national players as his asking salary for a FIBA window is reportedly in six dollar figures. Let’s hope this talk isn’t true because if it is, Sotto will lose his image as a national treasure and go down in basketball history as an unpatriotic mercenary.