Chot says Gilas best offensive game a product of ‘players playing for each other’

BOCAUE — For a team which barely had any games together and has been hampered by injuries, safe to say, Gilas Pilipinas passed the test against Lebanon -- with flying colors.

Without the ceiling and athleticism following the absence of Kai Sotto and Japeth Aguilar, the nationals went back to its old, reliable weapon, that for a time, was missing or perhaps, forgotten – speed, passing and shooting.

On Friday night, Feb. 25 and in front of a sizable crowd that went further up north than usual at the Philippine Arena, Gilas, despite the lesser talent in its roster as compared from the previous windows, displayed a well-oiled and fine-tuned offense to beat the Cedars, 107-96.

“Obviously we're very satisfied with our offense. We shot the ball well. In fact, we had 31 assists and only 13 turnovers. So, that allowed us to hit 17 three pointers. Like I said, very good performance on the offensive end,” said Reyes.

The veteran mentor has all the reasons to be happy. It was Gilas' best scoring game for the entire qualifiers with the 17 triples tying the most in a single-game in the Asian tilt with Japan, Australia and Kazakhstan. Out of those triples, nine players in Gilas roster had at least one.

For Reyes, it was the response he wanted from his charges as they came together and soldiered on through the adversities prior to the start of the window.

“Being in unfamiliar situations where we hardly had enough practice, very limited preparation time. And I said, in situations like this, the best way to address it is to come together and to lean on each other,” said veteran mentor

“I’m very glad the players took that to heart. And I think you saw that today. The players were really playing for each other. They were running for each other, it didn't matter who scored as long as they were, the ball was moving very well and like I said, very very happy with that result,” he added.

Still, the nationals are not sitting on their laurels and get too much ahead of themselves, especially with Reyes seeing a lot of room for improvement for Gilas on the defensive end.

“There's still a lot to be desired on our defense. We gave up almost a hundred points to a team without Arakji, Haidar and even their naturalized players. So this is always the case, some things' to be happy about but somethings' to continue working on and learning experience for us. We need to be able to play a better defense to come out and have a better performance against Jordan on Monday,” stressed Reyes.