The Reyes report

Chot Reyes is ecstatic, and finally rested. The coach of our national basketball team was beaming at the opening of the Metro Manila finals of the adidas Streetball Challenge held at the SM Megamall over the weekend, and he had good reason to be. Reyes had just returned from an exhausting two-week trip to the US, where he brought back a lot of new knowledge of the game, and profound awe at some of its most respected practitioners.

The former Coca-Cola Tigers coach was gushing about the chance to spend a few days with the veteran Larry Brown, head coach of the Detroit Pistons. Brown, who has coached in the NCAA, ABA and NBA, gave Reyes a rare peek into the mind of a coaching legend.

"You know, with Coach Brown, what really struck me was, in spite of the status and the level he is as a basketball coach, is his constant search for knowledge, his thirst to learn," recalls Reyes. "We were having talks, and he kept on asking me things. He’d give me situation after situation, and I’d tell him what we were doing. I don’t know if it’s right."

Brown, whose coaching staff includes NBA veterans Phil Ford and Garfield Heard (who, as a Phoenix Sun, hit a clutch shot to cause the NBA’s longest game against the Boston Celtics) so enjoyed the exchange of ideas, he invited Reyes to bring the Philippine team to the Las Vegas Summer Pro League in July, offering Reyes a visit and scrimmage with the NBA champion squad.

"He even told his staff, who knows? We might learn something from them," Reyes recounts. "Can you imagine Larry Brown saying he might learn something from the Philippine team?"

Chot, who has himself coached at every level from high school up, even joined a pre-game coaches’ meeting in Brown’s office the day before a game against the Washington Wizards, and was one of a painfully exclusive few to be asked to sit in on a pre-game briefing, drawing quizzical looks from the Pistons players. (Not even team management and owners are allowed into Brown’s dugout, which he considers his special time with the players.)

Reyes also attended a conference of the NABC (National Association of Basketball Coaches), and immediately picked up four or five new drills which he started implementing with the national training pool.

"That just goes to show that you can never learn enough. It never ends," he adds. "We picked up so much, even from the lesser-known coaches. In LA, the practice was run by a community coach by the name of Bryan Wilson. And you know, I’ve been to Phil Jackson, Larry Brown, Dean Smith, all these top coaches, and that guy was doing things I’ve never seen."

Reyes also checked out two Fil-Am collegians he had heard about, to avoid any surprises in case they came to the Philippines first. They were legit, in every sense of the word.

"The two guys, KennyWilliams and Joe Devance, were players we specifically went to take a look at," Reyes admits. "I guess the surprise was that they’re both really good people. They’re very different from your typical American college player, and I think you that you can see the influence of the Filipino nanays in them."

And they were every bit the real deal on the court, as well.

"In terms of their ability to play, their skill, their talent. I was not surprised. I had a pretty good idea from speaking to some people who’ve seen them play," says Reyes. "The only reason I went there was to see , for myself, in actual live action, how they play. But number two, more importantly, I wanted to get a sense of who they were as people. And I wanted to meet their moms, to be able to gauge if they were legitimate Fil-Ams."

Williams, a fresh communications graduate, joins the Philippine pool at the Moro Lorenzo Sports Center at the Ateneo de Manila today. DeVance, meanwhile, will finish his criminal justice studies in June, before flying over.

Overall, Reyes has enflamed his passion for the game even more, and came home like a kid who had just been let into the world’s largest candy store, and allowed to bring some samples home as pasalubong.