Gilas needs size in World Cup says Iran coach

MANILA, Philippines – Gilas Pilipinas’ monumental run in the 2013 Manila FIBA Asia Men’s Basketball Championship fell short when it rammed into Iran’s Persian Wall.

In the end, Hamed Hadadi, a 7-foot-2 NBA veteran, proved to be the biggest roadblock to Philippines' path to return on top of the Asian basketball. 

Hadadi, who played for the Phoenix Suns in the NBA last season, led Iran to its third FIBA Asia title with  a dominant 29-point and 16-rebound performance in the gold medal match.

Without its injured 6-11 center Marcus Douthit (right calf), Gilas had no answer to Iran's tower of power. 

Hadadi helped the Iranians control the boards, 51-34, and points in the paint, 34-22.

“Obviously, we wanted to get the gold, but without Marcus Douthit, it’s really difficult to play a team with tremendous size, talent and good coaching,” Chot Reyes later admitted.

“We were right there. If we had our big guy, who knows, we could have given them a better fight. But Iran is a great, great team,” Reyes added.

Gilas’ rookie big man Junemar Fajardo, who stands 6-10, and the 6-foot-9 Japeth Aguilar took turns in trying to stop Hadadi but the gap in size and international experience proved too much for the two young Filipino big men.

Despite the loss, Reyes saw a silver lining that may serve them well in the future.

“But I’m proud of my players. We fought tooth and nail,” said Reyes, who singled out the gallant stand of Fajardo and Aguilar against Hadadi. “Who would have thought Japeth and Junemar would fight that way.”

Hadadi admitted that this was their toughest game in the tournament despite the big margin in the end.

“We played the best team in the Philippines,” said Hadadi, who was fittingly named the tournament MVP. “They are great in fastbreaks and three-point shots. Sometimes, you can’t stop them in fastbreaks.”

And he was right.

The Filipinos tried to keep the game close with their outside shooting (10 3-pointers) and running game (11 fastbreak points) predicated on defense, which forced the Iranians to commit 18 turnovers that they parlayed into 14 points.

And for the first 21 minutes, the Filipinos fought the taller Iranians almost on equal footing even briefly taking the lead on Jayson Castro’s free throws, 36-35, in the opening moments of the second half to delight of the 19,989 crowd in attendance.

The celebration, however, was cut short when the Iranians unleashed a crippling 10-0 run to wrest control and never allowed the Filipinos to come within a striking distance.

Even Iran’s coach praised the Filipinos for giving them a run for their money even without Douthit.

“This [game] was very hard,” Iran’s Slovenian coach Mehmed Becirovic told a handful of Filipino reporters after emerging from the post-game press conference. “Because [Philippines] has really big crowd.”

Becirovic shared that he was very angry at halftime when his team allowed the Douthit-less Gilas Pilipinas to make the game close and get the crowd into the game.

“They [crowd] give energy to the team and for me, it’s very very difficult to play a team like that,” Becirovic said.  

But he has doubts if Gilas Pilipinas can sustain that kind of energy in the World Cup with no home crowd to feed them that.

“They need some big guys [for the World Cup] for sure,” Becirovic noted. “They cannot play this way. You can only play this way if you have a big crowd behind.”