Coaching Gilas entails full-time job?

MANILA, Philippines - Should coaching the national team be a full-time job or can it be done by someone tending other duties?

This could well be among the delicate issues tackled by the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas search and screening committee as they met yesterday to set the parameters and guidelines for the selection of the coach handling Gilas Pilipinas that vies for a stint in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

SBP vice chairman Ricky Vargas, executive director Sonny Barrios, PBA commissioner Chito Salud, PBA board chair Patrick Gregorio and vice chair Robert Non met for over two hours in a Quezon City restaurant and came up with a tentative set of criteria subject to the approval by the SBP executive board headed by MVP Group big boss Manny V. Pangilinan.

The SBP special committee opted to defer the announcement of the criteria until its formal approval.

The group, however, is likely to hand the delicate job to a coach who has had a previous international exposure.

The big question is whether they would give it to somebody that would do double duties.

Or like in the case of Chot Reyes, the would-be coach, if he’s a PBA head coach, would have to give up his PBA duties?

Among the top contenders should be Tim Cone, Jong Uichico, Yeng Guiao and Norman Black, but all of them are head coaches in their respective PBA teams.

Cone was the last coach to steer Team Phl to a medal finish in the Asian Games, leading the Philippine Centennial team to third place in Bangkok in 1998.

Uichico, with the Phl team in 2002, narrowly missed the Busan Asiad finale before settling for fourth place – the same finish of Black and his team in Hiroshima in 1994.

In 1999, the Philippines improved a notch up to eighth place in the FIBA Asia Championship under Guiao.

Chot Reyes is the Filipino coach with the most international exposures, being an assistant to Cone in the Centennial team, also deputy to Rajko Toroman at Gilas 1, and head coach in two FIBA Asia Championships, two FIBA Asia Cups and a host of many other international wars. But Reyes has withdrawn his name for consideration in the short list of candidates to be drawn up by the SBP special committee.   

Another man that could be on the radar of the committee is Tab Baldwin, a Gilas Pilipinas coaching consultant in the time of Reyes.

Now also working as consultant of the TnT Tropang Texters in the PBA, Baldwin has handled the national teams of New Zealand, Malaysia, Lebanon and Jordan.

He engineered the Kiwis’ surprised semifinal finish in the 2002 World Championship and Jordan’s second-place wind-up behind China in the 2011 Asian joust in Wuhan, China.

Robert Jaworski has expressed willingness to make a return stint as a national coach. His accomplishment of handing the country the silver medal in the 1990 Beijing Asiad has remained unsurpassed up to this moment.