Chot upbeat on Scottie’s recovery

MANILA, Philippines — Gilas head coach Chot Reyes said yesterday he’s hoping that Scottie Thompson will be able to recover from a metacarpal bone fracture in his right hand in time to claim a spot in the 12-man lineup for the FIBA World Cup that starts Aug. 25. Thompson suffered the injury during practice in Gilas’ recent trip to Lithuania and doctors expect a full recovery in four to six weeks.

“I’m told Scottie’s a fast healer so maybe, in four weeks, he’ll be ready,” said Reyes. “Scottie’s a big piece and one of our leaders whom everyone looks up to.” With injuries hounding Gilas’ 21-man pool, Reyes said the team is moving forward. He welcomed Ray Parks, Calvin Oftana and RR Pogoy to practice after they skipped the Europe training to recover from injuries. Only 14 players were on the 16-day trip to Estonia and Lithuania with Ange Kouame joining late after attending his Ateneo graduation.

Reyes said Jordan Heading is rehabbing his back in the US and while SBP is in touch with him to monitor his progress, his availability is uncertain. “We can’t worry about guys who aren’t here,” said Reyes. “We’re hoping Kai (Sotto) comes in after the NBA Summer League ends so maybe, he can be back on July 18 or 19. We’re playing three tune-ups in China and it’s important that Kai and Jordan (Clarkson) are with us. AJ (Edu) should also be ready to play.” Gilas is booked to play Iran, Lebanon and Senegal in China on Aug. 2-6 and Reyes called it the penultimate test before the World Cup. The final test will be tune-ups with early arriving teams after the China games.

“We’ll play one naturalized in China to simulate what’s allowed in the World Cup,” said Reyes. “In Lithuania, we played Ange and Justin (Brownlee) together because we wanted Ange to play like Kai so we could experiment with Japeth (Aguilar) moving from five to four and Justin playing three.” Gilas returned from Europe last Monday with Dwight Ramos, Poy Erram, Chris Newsome, Edu and Thompson nursing injuries but richer with experience. “Dwight went up for a rebound and landed on Poy’s foot,” said Reyes. “Poy strained his knee and sat out our last tune-up with Dwight. Chris bruised his knee in a collision with JuneMar (Fajardo) at practice but played in all our tune-ups. AJ participated in all our drills but sat out the tune-ups to recover from the ankle sprain that he suffered on the last day of training in Australia before coming over.” Reyes said he may expand the pool to cover for injuries but it may be too late to break in new players. “We had 22 practice sessions and six tune-ups in Europe so new players have a lot of catching up to do if ever,” he said.

Reyes said he’s open to the idea of forming a Select Team to spar with Gilas in training like what the 1992 US Olympic team and 2019 US World Cup squad did. “Still a lot of work to do but we’re getting there,” he said. “In our first tune-up in Estonia, we had 23 turnovers then improved with every game. JuneMar got better defending European bigs who play the perimeter and dominated in his last tune-up with 28 points. That game, we held Lithuania to 10 points in the third quarter.”