Baldwin: Estonia sortie a learning experience

MANILA, Philippines - Coach Tab Baldwin said their Estonia experience where they absorbed three losses was an eye opener on what Gilas Pilipinas had to work on and insisted that the bonding among the aspirants was a positive step in their buildup for the Fiba Asia Championship.

“Right now we’re still in the process of building a basketball team so I can’t even assess how good we will become yet,” said Baldwin.

“The most important thing about the trip is we finally got away. We finally got together as a group of people and it was obvious that there was a good feeling and there was some bonding that went on with the team,” Baldwin said.

“And that’s really important. I don’t believe you can be a real strong team without that,” he added.

Their preparation will also get a big boost when they leave for Taipei tomorrow to compete in the Jones Cup.

Back in their Manila camp with Marc Pingris finally joining the pool, Baldwin is now plugging the holes so evident in their Estonian journey.

“I’m a little more concerned about our defense than our offense. The offense definitely showed signs of improvement but we were a step slow defensively the whole tournament so it’s something we’ve gotta work on,” Baldwin pointed out.

“It’s something that we were struggling to cover. There are a lot of factors there. Some of it is our systems have to be adjusted. Some of it is our fitness,” he added.

But Baldwin is convinced they’ve got better.

“We didn’t come away with any results but I didn’t really have a lot of expectations and I probably didn’t have as good an estimation of what the competition would be,” he said.

“We would like to have gotten a win over there but we came away a better basketball team,” he also said.

“We always understand that that’s gonna take a bit of time. It was never gonna be a miracle that they would just, after such short practice time and with these many disruptions as injuries as we’ve had, that it would be smooth. And it wasn’t smooth, but we got better and better.”

LA Laker Jordan Clarkson was to join Gilas in their evening workout last night.