For coach Tim Cone, the lack of continuity is what's keeping Philippine basketball from fulfilling its true potential in the international arena.
"That, to me, is the biggest lack that we have had in our national program," he said on Thursday's episode of Coaches Unfiltered. "We're never giving the national team a chance to process into what they could be and reach their pinnacle of how best they could be."
The two-time Grand Slam mentor first dived in on the matter of frequent coaching shuffles and said expecting successful results to come immediately doesn't exactly aid growth.
"Coaching is all about failing and achieving. You're winning and you're losing, and you're learning from the losing, and you're bringing it on to the winning. If you are looking for that instant gratification, then you're not growing. You don't get a chance to grow and learn, and you don't give your people a chance to grow and learn," he explained.
Rajko Toroman and Chot Reyes were prime examples Cone named in illustrating the benefits of continuity. Toroman, now with Indonesia, handled Smart Gilas from 2009 to 2011 and led them to a fourth-place finish in the FIBA Asia Championships, while Reyes had winning stints from 2012 to 2014 and 2016 to 2018, as well as a World Cup appearance on his notch.
Those two, however, only lasted at the helm for two years. After Reyes' first run at coaching the national team from 2005 to 2008, no one has been able to hold the post for more than that length continuously.
Cone himself has had two one-tournament stints with the Philippine team two decades apart. In 1998, he led the Centennial team to a bronze in the Bangkok Asian Games, and 21 years later, he steered Gilas Pilipinas to a home sweep of the 30th Southeast Asian Games.
"Every time you change the coach, you have to start from zero, pick the team, put the system together, and then go through the trial of whether this is the right system, are we doing the right things, are these the right players, do we need to change them," he said.
"Every one of those coaches are completely different. We all run different systems. Every one of us. So how does our system, how does our coaching, how does our philosophy, how does our relationships with players -- how does that continue?" Cone added.
The benefits of continuity also trickle down to chemistry among players, with Cone -- citing his Grand Slam years in Alaska and the Purefoods franchise -- saying that ample time is needed to figure out who the core members of the team would be moving forward.
"We had to go through a bunch of losses before we were able to win that Grand Slam," he said. "I mean, if we had stayed with the team in 1991 and kept that same team up until 1996, there's no way we would have a Grand Slam. We had to figure out that we needed to change personnel to get into '96. We did the same thing at Purefoods. By the time we won the Grand Slam, we had different players."
"The core was the same and you keep the core because that's your core you're going to rely on, but you got to find the pieces that all fit together and create that chemistry that's going to get you to play at a higher level," he continued. "Chemistry allows you to play beyond your talent."
Cone also pointed to his coaching experience in last year's SEA Games to reinforce his fact and said the little bumps and mistakes that national teams go through could easily be cleaned up with more time together.
"That Southeast Asian Games, they created a really nice chemistry very quickly. And they bought into the system very quickly, and they moved the ball, and there were games we had 40 assists. Of course the competition was not great, but we still have averaged 36 or 37 assists that whole tournament. And these guys are all superstars. And they had no reason to pass the ball, but they did," he said. "But we were terrible defensively because we just didn't have the time to work on our defense the way we wanted to work on. Indonesia ate us up. I mean, we just overpowered them because of our talent, but Rajko Toroman's system ate us up because we weren't prepared to battle the screens the way we wanted to, we weren't all on the same page defensively, we were making mistakes, guys are going under instead of over, and we were getting behind on seals and we weren't getting back well. I mean, there were all kinds of things.
"But over time, you keep that team together over time, those things are cleaned up, they're gonna get better, and they're going to get better, and they're going to get better, and sooner or later they're going to get to a point where they're going to reach the peak. And that's what you're building to whatever tournament you're looking at, and you're going to use other tournaments to go win."
Keeping a team continuously over the years would also go a long way in cutting down the length of training camps, according to Cone.
"Potentially we can be really great, but we've just never reached our potential. And it's not necessarily about preparation. We use that term a lot," Cone noted. "When you come back and those guys already have that continuity, they don't need a full recap of what you need to do because they know it. And now they're going to also infect the other players in a way that's saying, 'We know how to do this.' They're going to be your examples, and that makes things easier."
Though Cone qualified his statements by saying it wasn't a catch-all answer to all of the questions the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas (SBP) have to solve, he said providing a little more leeway may help change the results.
"The worst thing is to just play one tournament and say, 'Oh, we failed. We were bulok. It's time to change the culture, it's time to change the system.' And now we go on to the next one and we're doing the same thing again. And so that's been my big issue about the national team. We're not allowing teams to grow and get better," he said.
Added Cone: "That is, to me, the big question that needs to be answered by the national teams. And once you figure out how to do that and attack that, then I think that our national teams become a force especially in Asia, and maybe even in the international arena, in Europe and the rest of the world. I really do believe that, but I just don't think that we've ever been able to answer that question."