The lens might not be rosy to look at especially when viewed after Gilas Pilipinas absorbed back-to-back losses to close out the FIBA Asia Cup Qualifiers, but national team head coach Tim Cone and the rest of the team would like to see it on a wider perspective.

Cone admitted that the series of friendlies Gilas did during its Doha trip might have hurt the Nationals in terms of preparation for the third and final window but he stressed that having more games together is exactly what they need in the long run.

“We're together so little. We were able to do a Doha trip before we came here just to try to get more time together and play more games, and it probably hurt us more than it helped us in terms of being ready for Taiwan and New Zealand,” Cone admitted.

“But we were trying to look at a bigger picture in terms of the FIBA Asia coming up, because we know we're not going to have much time,” added the veteran coach.

Cone, once again, stressed that the Gilas program is playing the long game and that everything that the national team did over the past few months was done with the emphasis on getting the team prepared for the bigger stage, which, at this point, is the FIBA Asia Cup set in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in August.

“We may have eight, 10 days at most to come together and prepare for that tournament, so everything we do, just like coach Judd is saying, it's cumulative. It's cumulative experiences,” explained Cone after Gilas’ 70-87 loss to New Zealand.

“We're trying to take each window as an experience and move it on to the next one and on to the next one and hopefully grow it and improve,” he added.

And having more games under their belt is important for Gilas at this point especially in trying to learn to play without 7-foot-3 center Kai Sotto who was a huge part of the team in terms of anchoring the defense and providing a versatile scoring threat for Cone’s triangle offense.

“We lost a really, obviously, a key, key player for a year in terms of Kai Soto, and so we're still trying to adjust how to play without him, and that's the things we're going to be talking about and thinking about as we go into the FIBA Asia Cup,” he added.

While Gilas lost its last two games and dropped to the second place in the Group B standings, the Nationals finally got to see AJ Edu, who was one of the few bright spots for Gilas during the window.