After coaching the national team to podium finishes twice, coach Tim Cone feels that there is a need for continuity in handling Team Pilipinas.
Cone said this six months after steering Gilas to a gold medal finish in the 2019 Southeast Asian Games.
“That’s what I’ve always felt about the national team. I mean, I coached two decades apart and I had to really, really look back at that two decades earlier to figure out the things we did that were successful,” said Cone in a podcast last Friday.
The other time Cone handled the national squad was back in 1998 when the Philippine Centennial squad earned a bronze medal in the Asian Games.
The national team, while still under Cone’s watch, captured the William Jones Cup crown the same year.
Looking forward, Cone believes that there many things that could lead to the future success of Gilas in the Asia Pacific region.
“What are the things we did that weren’t successful? I’m not gonna try and do that again with the Gilas team in the Southeast Asian Games. Then, it was difficult because there was no continuity,” said Cone.
Cone believes that this will be the challenge that Gilas will have when it tries to retain the SEA Games crown.
“And so that to me is the biggest lack that we’ve had in our national program. It’s the lack of continuity,” said Cone.
The 62-year-old Cone noted the times when Rajko Toroman and Chot Reyes used to handle the Gilas program.
“I think the teams and the guys that stayed the longest like Rajko (Toroman), Rajko had some good success,” said Cone.
Cone noted that Toroman developed a program and a good team because he went to multiple tournaments, and had numerous wins and losses, “which went on for a while.”
As for Reyes, Cone said he brought the national team to the world championships, the result that they were looking for.
“That world championship was… he played, maybe, five or six tournaments together prior to that you know. And they lost and won and lost and won. He had a lot of experience going to that world championship and it culminated in that world championship,” Cone went on.