Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas (SBP) executive director Erika Dy admitted her frustration over the confusion surrounding the eligibility rule that will be implemented in the basketball competitions of the Thailand Southeast Asian Games.
Dy said a meeting is set on Wednesday to once again discuss the matter after reports surfaced that Thailand will bar naturalized players from suiting up in the standard 5-on-5 event for the Games.
‘There are a lot of issues, actually, and we’re also very frustrated about it,’ Dy said after a send-off event for the Gilas Pilipinas squad that will face Guam twice in the first window of the Fiba World Cup Asian Qualifiers.
It appeared that everything’s set with a passport-only rule to be applied for the biennial meet set for Dec. 9 to 20, before the report on the naturalized player ban came out.
But Dy also said that the contingency plans were already laid out given the said concerns.
‘The first eligibility rule they gave us a few months back was passport only,’ said Dy. ‘Although knowing that it’s the SEA Games and we know that the host has prerogative on this, we were prepared for both, even if we already got the notice from [the Philippine Olympic Committee]. So we always have a plan B. Then suddenly, they passed a new handbook which wasn’t clear.’
Dy noted ‘there were two different paragraphs’ that discussed Fiba rules on one and another ‘talking about just the passports,’ which baffled not just SBP but participating federations, she recalled.
Nonetheless, the SBP submitted the names of Jamie Malonzo and Geo Chiu while Dy clarified that Justin Brownlee and Ange Kouame have yet to be ruled out for the competition.
Kouame, however, is confirmed to play for Gilas in the 3×3 event with no eligibility issues.
‘POC president Bambol Tolentino mentioned that if we don’t hear any comments from them in the Nov. 26 meeting, that means the lineup is approved,’ Dy said.