JORDAN Clarkson is fine– he just needed a rest.
“He just needed a rest,” Gilas Pilipinas team manager Butch Antonio said. “Nothing like that. He really just wanted to rest.”
National coach Chot Reyes echoed Antonio, saying: “Kailangan lang niya nang pahinga.”
Antonio and Reyes’ words should be enough to allay fears the 6-foot-5 Clarkson might not play in the FIBA World Cup kicking off this Friday after he sat out the Philippine five’s 77-84 loss to world No. 30 Mexico in a tune-up game behind closed-doors last Monday night at the PhilSports Arena in Pasig.
Clarkson, of the Utah Jazz, asked for a breather after playing the entire first half and the first four minutes of the third quarter in the Philippines’ 85-62 victory over Ivory Coast last Friday. He stayed in the game for 29:39 minutes in an 87-102 defeat to world No. 18 Montenegro last Sunday night.
Without Clarkson, a former NBA Sixth Man of the Year awardee, reigning PBA MVP Scottie Thompson paced the Nationals with 14 points, but no other Gilas player scored in double figures, with Roger Pogoy adding nine markers.
Dwight Ramos, Jamie Malonzo, and Kai Sotto had eight markers each.
Reyes, Antonio, and assistant coaches Jong Uichico and Josh Reyes, all sported stern looks but not because of the outcome.
Also with them, having driven straight from the airport after a 24-hour flight, layovers included, from Granada, Spain, was Tim Cone, Gilas’ main man in charge of plotting the defense in the world cage spectacle.
Cone, who missed the Filipino dribblers’ scrimmages against Ivory Coast and Montenegro, was in Granada, a city of 232,208 in southern Spain’s Andalusia region, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, for a top-secret mission–file a dossier on Dominican Republic.
Cone was there when Dominican Republic, powered by Minnesota Timberwolves forward Karl-Anthony Towns, downed Canada 94-88 in a tune-up game, and when Spain scored an 86-77 win over the world No. 23.
