Gilas Pilipinas coach Tim Cone considers his freshly-won gold medal in the 30th Southeast Asian Games one of the biggest highlights of his brilliant coaching career.
"You can't go wrong with the gold medal. My Gosh, a gold medal, that's something you can remember forever," Cone gushed after steering the Nationals to the most cherished mint of the biennial meet with a 115-81 beating of Thailand.
"I mean, if you're like (multi-titled swimmer) Mark Spitz and had 10 golds medals, maybe that's something (normal) but if you got one, that's going to be incredibly special," he added.
The two-time grand slam winning coach in the PBA has waited 21 long years for his chance to strike gold in the international play. Cone had previously handled the Philippine Centennial team in 1998 Asian Games but managed only to bring home a bronze.
"I've won a few championships in the PBA but this one ranks right up there about the top. The bronze in the Asian Games, looking back, was special as well, but just the whole experience of being here (SEAG) and being with these guys and the support of everyone in the country, SBP, Al Panlilio, Alfrancis Chua and the support of the players, these players were so phenomenal so it was a great experience all around.
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"So you're gonna remember the gold because of all the experience you went through this last week," he said.
Cone didn't take chances as he assembled an all-veteran crew for the SEAG mission.
Though he lost Jayson Castro and later RR Pogoy to injury, he's able to form a highly-competitive, versatile Final 12 in Barangay Ginebra players LA Tenorio, Stanley Pringle, Japeth Aguilar and Greg Slaughter and superstars June Mar Fajardo, Vic Manuel, Matthew Wright, Marcio Lassiter, Troy Rosario, Kiefer Ravena, Christian Standhardinger, and Chris Ross.
"I love the composition of this team, I love the balance, I love the chemistry. I thought those were the real strengths of this team," he said.
Cone's charges threw their weight around the opposition like a KO artist who felt out the other fighter at first before letting loose his cracking finishing shots.
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"We've doing that (second-half surge) all tournament long. We've been playing tentative in the beginning, I don't know if that's my fault, you know, got the guys too tight or whatever.
"But we come out, it's like more in a boxing match and we're kinda dancing around the ring and not throwing any real punches and then suddenly, half time came and now we're throwing haymakers on everybody and really going for the kill. We did that against Vietnam, we did that against Indonesia and now we did that against Thailand (in the finals)," he said.
A veteran of many high stakes battle, Cone admitted feeling the nerves as the gold medal outing against the Thais went along.
"The first half has some real anxious moments. I've forgotten how much anxiety this job brings and I can imagine what (Gilas predecessors) coach Yeng (Guiao) felt in the World Cup playing those magnificent teams like Serbia and Italy and coach Chot (Reyes) before that, playing Argentina and all those teams.
"This is a whole different level from that. I was tasked with the idea of putting a strong team together and coming out and trying to showcase our PBA skills to the Southeast Asian region and I thought basically accomplished the mission," said Cone. (OL) / Photo: Marlo Cueto (spin.ph)
