It's PBA's triumph too!

The Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) wants to sit down with the Samahang Basketboll ng Pilipinas (SBP) in the face of changes to be made by world basketball governing body FIBA on the elimination tournaments for the World Cup and the Olympics.

      
PBA support for SBP and Gilas has been running hot and cold, thus this move by Asia’s first play-for-pay league is most welcome. Foremost among the concerns of the PBA re FIBA’s format changes is that the mulled home-and-away FIBA games may be disruptive of the PBA’s own schedule.

      
The US National Basketball Association, which the PBA has been trying hard to emulate as a business model, has already declared that it would not disrupt its season to fit around the FIBA tournaments.

      
The PBA echoed the NBA by pointing out that the new FIBA schedules might render the PBA existing only as some kind of a support system for Gilas.  

     
 At the moment, it seems the PBA would prefer a permanent pool of players to be formed instead of picking the players of Gilas from its teams. This is of course the ideal since the players would be more accustomed to playing with one another resulting to a more cohesive Gilas team. This is not to say though that the present Gilas team is a ragtag band because it is not.

     
 The PBA should always remember that the success of Gilas is its own because victories after victories by the Philippine quintet in the world stage will certainly rekindle passion for PBA games and increase its gate attendance.

Image by: FIBA