Thoughts on Kouame, Kai, and Gilas moving forward, from a Serbian correspondent

For Gilas Pilipinas' campaign in the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament, GMA News Online connected with Milos Jovanovic, a veteran Serbian sportswriter, to help break things down from an outside perspective. Read his previews of the Philippines-Serbia game and the Philippines-Dominican Republic game, and his thoughts on Gilas' upset scare of Serbia and Gilas' 'welcome to the big league moment' aginst Dominican Republic.

As the curtains fall on the Belgrade OQT, it is time to draw some early conclusions.

For the hosts, the tournament was a total, utter failure – Serbia sputtered on their way to the finals, and then an inspired Italian team exposed them in a magnificent performance, shooting their way to Tokyo.

For the guests, other than the Italians that is, it was so-so. Senegal never showed up, Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic failed to impress, and what about the Philippines? Well, we can call it a learning experience.

It was since 2019 that the Philippine national team didn’t rear its face in an intercontinental competition. Back then, a PBA-reinforced roster, together with Andray Blatche, failed to make a serious impression – they lost their games against Italy and Serbia with a combined 109 points worth of difference, then lost to Angola in overtime. It seemed like a step back from the decent performance in Spain in 2014, when Gilas managed to score an epic win against Senegal, and lost to Croatia and Puerto Rico by the narrowest of margins.

But sometimes, as they say, you need to take a step back to advance a few forward. While 2019 might have been an unintentional retreat, the Olympic qualifiers of 2021 look like an intended one. And coach Tab Baldwin’s idea to try an untested team against such vaunted opposition might yet bear some fruit.

The most immediate look at the Filipino future was on display in Belgrade, as Kai Sotto and Ange Kouame enjoyed extended minutes in both games. For Kouame, the verdict is fairly easy to make – he belongs. It’s simple as that.

Kouame, who was the third on the Gilas squad in terms of minutes played, has shown serious promise. With an average of 5.5 rebounds, he paced the squad in this stat category, while his 13.5 markers per game were the second-best on the roster. But more than the numbers, he has shown he’s not afraid to mix it up with the big boys. His performance against Boban Marjanovic was especially memorable – as noted before, it takes a strong guy not to get pushed around by Boban, and Kouame has proven his mettle in this duel.

With Kouame, the Philippine national team begins a new era in terms of naturalized players. When Blatche was on the roster, the import was used in a classical PBA sense of things – score a lot, grab some boards, and draw double teams. Kouame’s integration is more organic than that. He won’t score 40 per game, at least not right now, but he seems like a better fit team-wise, feeling more like "one of the guys". His growth will be closely bound to the team fortunes as well, and he may serve Gilas well for many years.

Kai Sotto has also shown some interesting glimpses of potential. With size, pace and good mobility, the Las Piñas southpaw has the tools to be a dominating presence in not only Asian, but worldly basketball in the next decade. Still, he has some decisions to make in order to advance his career in a best way possible.

His style, right now, is too much leaning on the modern NBA unicorns such as Kristaps Porzingis, and he spent an uncomfortable – for my liking, at least – amount of time lurking around the midrange and the perimeter. While he still managed to post acceptable averages of 9 points and 4.5 rebounds in his two outings, Sotto must develop an aggressive streak and try and materalize his advantages closer to the rim. Once his inside game gets respect and recognition, he will be able to work on his midrange jumpers as a sidearm in his arsenal. The Australian NBL is a good stepping stone towards accomplishing those goals.

The best overall performer on the Gilas squad, though, was definitely Jordan Heading. The 25-year old impressed with his outside shooting, hitting eight out of eleven of his three point attempts, and looked like your usual Filipino "stable-but-electric" presence in the guard rotation. Heading, who also had six total assists over two games, has emerged as a leader in the absence of Dwight Ramos, and he will be the one to look at should he make the Asian Cup roster.

The rest of the squad looked like a mixed bag. SJ Belangel was the leading dimer of the team with 8 assists per game, but he looked out of solutions under a harder defensive clamp. Justine Baltazar and RJ Abarrientos have shown that they can light it up on short notice, but especially the latter looked a touch turnover-prone on occasions. Isaac Go has added some steel under the rim, while Carl Tamayo has, in my opinion, earned some extended minutes – standing 6-foot-7, his stretch presence is an underrated quality on this team. Will Navarro and Mike Nieto looked decent in stretches, while we rarely saw Geo Chiu on the court, who didn’t attempt a field goal in his two minutes of play.

It would be, of course, foolish to rate anyone based on this tournament, in which Gilas only held the faintest of hopes to win one of their ties. Rather, this is to be observed as a mere showcase and part of the preparations for the Asian Cup in Jakarta, which is coming soon. And based on what we’ve seen against veteran international opposition, Baldwin might have some interesting weapons at his disposal. Especially with a healthy Ramos, and a full training camp under their belts.

So lose both games they might have, but the overall feeling is that they haven’t embarassed themselves. Two years ago, Gilas looked like easy pushovers in blowout defeats against Serbia and Italy, even prompting the then-Serbian coach Djordjevic to loudly ponder the purpose of having too many teams at the World Cup.

Now, they have less stars, but they performed better as a team – they lost honorably and not without a fight. Whether all of this amounts to something, I guess we will find out in Jakarta soon enough.

Milos Jovanovic is a veteran sportswriter based in Belgrade, Serbia, mostly writing about basketball. His past credits include VICE Serbia where he ran the weekly sports column. He also hosts a weekly hoops podcast to be found at the Serbian MONDO news outlet website, and has contributed to and directed several basketball-themed documentaries which were aired on TV nationally. He is fluent in Serbian, English and Dutch and prefers to be left alone when Red Star Belgrade are playing.

—JMB, GMA News