There's not a lot of clarity yet in terms of Sage Tolentino's future with Gilas Pilipinas, but Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas (SBP) program director Tab Baldwin thinks it could still go one of both ways.
Baldwin said Tolentino wasn't able to obtain a Filipino passport when he turned 16 earlier this year, but he clarified that the federation had already done its due diligence on the 7-foot-1 center in an effort to have him represent the Philippine national team down the road.
"The 16-year birthday went by without Sage getting his passport, but I understand that SBP is fully aware of the situation with Sage and they've spoken with the family," Baldwin said on the Coaches Unfiltered podcast on Thursday. "I actually went over to Hawaii last year and met Sage and met his family and tried to do some of the spade work up front about getting the family interested in the Filipino environment."
While that development certainly doesn't sound favorable for fans hoping to see Tolentino in a Gilas jersey, Baldwin explained that FIBA rules are much more complicated than that.
"A lot of people also get hung up on the 16-year-old passport rule. The rule is far more complex than that," he said.
FIBA requires foreign-born players with local roots to obtain a passport from their home country before turning 16, but Baldwin said the basketball body reviews every case regardless of the age a player received his or her passport.
"The problem with a lot of those guys -- and I wish our whole fanbase understood this better -- is just because young men and women have Filipino lineage and Filipino bloodlines and may even have very, very recent Filipino bloodlines, that does not make them FIBA eligible," he began.
"They can take somebody who acquired a passport at the age of 15 and they can say they are ineligible because they don't believe that their basketball heritage is Filipino. Maybe they were born in the States and they have never been in the Philippines," Baldwin continued. "So when you go and make a case, you actually have to make a case that a young man's basketball heritage is Filipino."
But the logic also applies inversely. If a country can prove the player's connection to his or her homeland, FIBA can grant that eligibility to a player even if he or she wasn't able to secure a passport before turning 16.
This was the case for Greg Slaughter, who was cleared by FIBA to play for Gilas as a local in 2018 even though he was only able to get a Philippine passport when he was 17.
"The same thing would apply if we had somebody who is not Filipino, who lived here from an early age or from several years and learned all of basketball here and didn't get a passport until after the age of 16. FIBA could potentially look positively on that and grant a person like that a Filipino eligibility as a local," said Baldwin.
"So it really comes down to FIBA adjudicating each case, and I think there is some fairness in that. So we can't just cry, 'They're Filipino, they're Filipino, they belong here.' There has to be some commitment."
Although this means that it's still technically possible for Tolentino to suit up for the Philippines, Baldwin admitted he can't really gauge the chances of that happening anytime soon.
Right now, Tolentino's immediate future lies in Division I basketball in the NCAA, where he committed to play for Auburn University in the Southeastern Conference (SEC).
"It's very difficult to predict where that will go with Sage," he said. "We wish him well. I think he's a very, very talented player. But I don't know if we'll ever get our hopes into him or not."
Baldwin: Naturalized pool would be great, but focus is on Kouame
As it stands, Gilas already has a bevy of options for the naturalized player slot in its roster preparation for future FIBA tournaments.
"I think first of all you have to say that every single player right now who has a Philippine passport is eligible to be the one naturalized player, and that's a quite significant size pool that includes Jordan Clarkson, Stanley Pringle, Mo Tautuaa and on and on," Baldwin said.
But Baldwin acknowledged that having a bigger pool of players would be "good for the program," citing the need to have different options for different circumstances.
"There's also been a lot of talk about wanting to have a pool of naturalized players that are very specifically for Gilas. Somebody like an Ange (Kouame) or Justin Brownlee, Chris McCullough," he said. "Yes, we would like ultimately to have a pool of players that is more of a horses for courses, and that term means if it's a muddier race track, you want a horse who is better running on mud as opposed to a hard one."
But as much as Gilas wants to get the ball rolling on more appeals, Baldwin said all the focus right now for SBP is on Kouame, who is a step closer to naturalization after the House Committee on Justice on Wednesday approved the measure in Congress.
"At the end of the day, our focus is on Ange and getting him through the process and letting Congress see that these guys make a real contribution to Philippine society," said Baldwin. "And this is important to me that we don't see these guys just as basketball players, we see them as ambassadors of the country wearing a basketball uniform and moving within our community and other communities around the world as Filipino."
Once Kouame, the 2018 UAAP Rookie of the Year, is able to secure his status as a naturalized Filipino, the concurrent Ateneo head coach said the Blue Eagles won't look to "exploit a loophole" by adding a foreign student-athlete to their roster.
"I don't know what the UAAP's view about that is gonna be, and I think they will be well within their rights to look and judge it on an individual basis," he said. "I can tell you that as the coach of the team -- and I'm not the only decision-maker -- but I would not be looking to add another import player. I would not be looking to take advantage of Ange becoming a "local" just because possibly the rules have not considered that scenario yet.
"For me, I think I would rather our team play on the same basis as every other team, and every other team has one foreign player," he continued. "And because Ange may legitimately change his nationality, it doesn't really change the perspective on which he was brought to the country for college basketball. And so I would not be in favor of exploiting that sort of loophole to try and gain more competitive advantage for the team."