The new Gilas Pilipinas lineup is in for the long haul.

Newly appointed head coach Tim Cone briefly laid out the plans for the national team program which involved keeping the 12-man roster he personally handpicked for the duration of the FIBA cycle.

The veteran mentor, who steered the Nationals to their first gold medal in the Asian Games after a six-decade wait, said he intends to keep the lineup intact all throughout the competitions in the lead-up to the 2027 FIBA World Cup in Qatar.

“That was the plan (for the team to play through the FIBA cycle),” said Cone as he tried to put a premium on the continuity and chemistry of Gilas. 

“I think that was one thing that was often talked about Gilas and the national team, that we don’t have a sure level of continuity,” added the multi-titled mentor during the Philippine Sportswriters Association Awards Night on Monday, Jan. 29

Composing the team are June Mar Fajardo, Scottie Thompson and Calvin Oftana, Chris Newsome, CJ Perez, Jamie Malonzo, Dwight Ramos, AJ Edu, Carl Tamayo, Kai Sotto, Kevin Quiambao and Justin Brownlee.

Cone said that the team will play all of through the windows and various international tournaments including Southeast Asian Games, Asian Games and FIBA Asia Cup in hopes of reaching the team’s full potential in time for the World Cup

“We’re hoping that we can use the windows that we have to grow the team, that's the idea. They’re an experienced group, they play at a really high level. We’re not gonna ask a lot of length for the preparation time we feel like each window will prepare us for the next window,” explained Cone

“We should be doing all of these windows together and  keeping the continuity going with the same system, same players  and get to know each other better and better until we reach our full potential after three or four years,” he added.

Cone added that the approach in the new Gilas program was very much similar to how a club team in the PBA and other commercial teams are being formed and developed. 

“We want to keep this team intact because every time we either grow from the success or failure that we have. It kinda looks like a PBA team or NBA team or B.League team, any kind of basketball team, you keep a team together as much as you can and you try to get them together and learn from the failures and successes,” Cone furthered.

While admitting that keeping all 12 players during the four-year cycle might be a little bit challenging especially with players getting older and sustaining injuries, Cone stressed that the idea was to have a solid core that knows the system well.

“Ideally, it will be the same 12 guys for four years. But that’s kinda unrealistic, players get older and players get injured. There would be tweaks along the way but the idea is to keep an intact core and understand the system,” said Cone.