Gilas Pilipinas head coach Tim Cone is ready to stick with the 12 names he handpicked for the national team for the entirety of the four-year FIBA cycle.

Unlike in the past programs, the multi-titled mentor said he is not keen on forming a big pool of players to compose the national team as he puts more emphasis on building the team’s cohesion and chemistry as if it was a club team in professional leagues.

Such a setup, according to Cone, would also address player availability issues which hindered past Gilas programs. Since the team would be playing with the same faces in the lineup, forming familiarity and chemistry wouldn't be a big of an issue and, as a result, the national team wouldn’t have to beg for the leagues to adjust their calendars and make way for long Gilas preparations.

“We didn't want to put a big pool together. That takes more time. You know, the PBA and the league's and UAAP, NCAA— they don't want to stop their league for a month or two or three months for us to prepare,” noted Cone.

“There's always going to be resistance from them to lend their players. If we can prove that we can do it with a short preparation time—a shorter preparation that is cumulative over time, then the stakeholders are gonna say, 'Oh, yeah, we see that, you know, we can bend our league around seven days of prep, or 10 days of prep,” he furthered.

As it stands, Cone said Gilas is only asking seven to 10 days of preparation time for every window.

The downside of the setup however is when injuries hit the national team. Without a pool of players where Cone can easily pull a replacement from, Gilas might be forced to play shorthanded and make do with the only available personnel.

But the multi-titled mentor has no problem with that.

“Just going with 12 guys, and we'll go with them,” said Cone, noting that Gilas is even getting ready to play with 10 or 11 players for the February window with AJ Edu out with a knee injury and Justin Brownlee still questionable pending the FIBA’s approval.

“Like right now, AJ Edu is injured. And he can't play in the first window. But that means, this one, we'll go with eleven until AJ can get good. We want him to be part of it. And he'll be available in April, which means he'll be available on the second window. So, that's kind of the way we did,” he explained.

Of course, Cone said tweaks on the lineup can be done in the future. But right now, the Gilas tactician stressed that the focus is to lay down the foundation for the Gilas team.

“If you need to tweak it here or there with personnel changes, then you do that. And just like a coach, if I need to tweak the system a little bit, then I'll make a tweak to the system as we go. But the foundation will be there. The foundational players will be there and the foundation of the system will be there. That's basically what we're trying to do,” added Cone.