As Gilas Pilipinas continuously deal with injuries to its key players ahead of the Olympic qualifying tournament, not a few fans and pundits have criticized the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas decision to have a lean pool for the national team.

They argued that if only Gilas had a big pool of players to work on, the Nationals would have enough personnel to choose from to build the lineup even with the injuries to AJ Edu, Jamie Malonzo and Scottie Thomspon.

But head coach Tim Cone, who originally named the 12 players to the pool, stood firm to the initial decision of having a short list of players, noting that he was not really a fan of cutting players from a bigger pool.

“I came to this approach that I would rather go with 12 and invite people to play, rather than go with 16 and cut people,” explained Cone.

“I didn’t want to cut people. These are stars. I don't want to cut people,” he stressed. 

Instead, the veteran coach opted to do it the other way around where he would add players to the pool, if need arises. 

Since naming the original 12 early this year, two players in Japeth Aguilar and Mason Amos have been officially added to the pool as reserves following Edu and Malonzo’s absence.

Gilas tried to add another following Thompson’s back injury with RR Pogoy joining the Nationals training camp at Inspire and the team seeking and talking to a few other options, only for the plans to bog down due to time constraints.

“The idea is we need somebody, we’ll go get them. We got Japeth, we got Mason. The thing with Scottie happened so late. However, we just couldn’t get somebody for him,” said Cone.

“This is just the style that I want to do, and we came into this with eyes wide open and we knew this might happen,” he added.