When the SMART-Gilas Pilipinas national team faces Chinese Taipei on Friday, it will attempt to be first Philippine basketball squad to make it to the semifinals of the FIBA Asia Championship in 24 years.

The last squad to accomplish the feat was the RP team coached by Joe Lipa in the 1987, when the tournament was known as the Asian Basketball Confederation Championship.

The Filipinos were bannered by Alvin Patrimonio, Jerry Codinera, Jojo Lastimosa, Benjie Paras, Ronnie Magsanoc, Dindo Pumaren, Glenn Capacio, Nelson Asaytono, Bong Alvarez, Zaldy Realubit, Joey Guanio, and Joey Mendoza. They cruised to the semifinal round of the Bangkok competition before falling short against Japan in the final four.

Patrimonio became the go-to guy for the Philippine team in the tournament, being named to the mythical five which also included Zhang Bin and Sun Fengwu of China and Hur Jae and Lee Chung-Hee of South Korea.

Zhang and Sun were members of China’s 1984 Olympic squad that finished fourth in Los Angeles.

Sun, who was appointed head coach of the Chinese women’s basketball team in 2009, played in two more Olympic games – in 1988 in Seoul and in 1992 in Barcelona – and was a key figure in six of China’s titles in the FIBA Asia tournament.

Jae, who is now the head coach of South Korea, is a legendary sharpshooter who still holds the most number of points scored in a single game in the FIBA World Championship with 60 points, which he posted in 1990.

Hee, on the other hand, was the MVP of the 1987 ABC and was also a deadly shooter.

The 1987 squad was perhaps the last strong all-amateur team the Philippines produced. Up until that year, the Philippines was a perennial beast in the tournament, finishing out of the top five only once in 14 stagings of the competition. But it has been all downhill since, with the country placing no better than seventh in the Asian championships.

Part of the reason for the lack of success in the competition is the fact that the Philippines rarely fielded in its strongest team for the tournament. When the PBA committed to lending its players to the national cause in 1990, it only signed on to compete in the Asian Games instead of the Asian championships. PBA teams that competed in the 1990, 1994, 1998, and 2002 Asian Games all finished in the top four of the tournament.

The league changed its tack under the leadership of former commissioner Noli Eala, who proposed that the PBA compete instead in the FIBA Asia tournament, which serves as qualifier to the Olympics and to the World Championship.

But a leadership dispute between the country’s basketball leaders led to the suspension of the country from FIBA competition, causing the PBA-backed national team to miss the 2005 tournament. Lack of preparation and unlucky groupings also submarined the chances of the 2007 and 2009 editions of the PBA selection to the FIBA-Asia, and they finished ninth and eighth, respectively, in those tournaments.

With three years of preparation under its belt, reinforcements from the PBA, an experienced international tactician in Rajko Toroman at the helm, and an imposing force in naturalized Marcus Douthit in the middle, SMART-Gilas looks to have the best chance of recovering the country’s place among the elite teams in Asia. Hopefully, the performance for the Philippine basketball program is more than just a flash in the pan.

source: Reynaldo Belen -InterAKTV