Gilas Pilipinas: The Natural

Photo courtesy of pba-online.net

His name is Marcus Douthit, and at 6"10 he is arguably the biggest yet most underscored storyline in the current renaissance enjoyed by Philippine basketball when it comes to international meets.

Time and again many have gone into detail about how incompetent our big men were down the block as compared to our Asian brethren. That despite being dominant at the local front, they're easily reduced to second-guessing fools who feel that all they have to do is concentrate on one end of the floor and leave the rest to the smaller guys.

Well, if they were blessed with the boxing out and positioning acumen of Dennis Rodman or even local Terry Saldana, then by all means, just stick to rebounding and helping on defense. But teams are only as good as each of the five guys on the floor; any time we're matched against quality opponents they'll simply look for the mismatches and start from there.

Asi Taulava, as much as we love him, concentrated on defense and had little to show on offense. This allowed teams to simply sag off him and help on the other guys. Marlou Aquino was too busy being out-muscled by anyone and everyone, and the guys before and after them not named Loyazaga or Paras were either too short or too slow.

Which brings us back to Douthit, and how valuable and indispensable he is for Gilas Pilipinas.

Truth be told, we can preach about how great head coach Chot Reyes and his Dribble Drive Motion Offense is—but that only works when you have a competent big man underneath.

Without Douthit, teams will simply seal the driving lanes knowing that there’s no threat inside waiting for drop passes. After sealing the lane, they can now also move out on to the shooters and challenge with relative ease given their height advantage.

Douthit changes all that. No, he isn’t exactly Shaq or Tim Duncan-dominant. But he is able. He is a thinking big man who can shoot jumpers or post-up. He is a willing passer and help defender. He does the little things so well that he is arguably the least of our worries whenever he is on the floor.

The system only works because of Douthit.

Plug in Fajardo and we probably won’t get the same results—if only because the Cebuano giant is still in his early 20s (hopefully he hasn’t peaked yet). Ranidel de Ocampo and Marc Pingris are too small and, well, Japeth Aguilar is Japeth Aguilar.

We’d go as far as to say that Douthit is a Top 5 center skills-wise in all of FIBA Asia (there’s Iran’s Haddadi and, his porn-stached wearing Iranian backup, Japan’s Takeuchi and Chinese Taipei’s Tseng Wen Ting. Jury’s out on China’s young guns 7”2 Zhang Zhaxou since they took legend Wang ZhiZhi off the national roster).

Do you agree that Gilas Pilipinas will only go as far as Douthit takes them this August?