Tab Baldwin willing to wait for June Mar to join Gilas Pilipinas

With little more than a month remaining before the Philippines competes in the FIBA Asia Championship, the door to the Gilas Pilipinas pool is starting to close as the team slowly comes together.

Coach Tab Baldwin initially named 16 PBA players to the roster, but necessary additions have already been made to reinforce the current members especially with LA Tenorio, Marc Pingris, and June Mar Fajardo yet to attend practice.

Troy Rosario and Moala Tautuaa have both been tapped from the amateur ranks, but the American-Kiwi coach said any further additions will be limited as the competition draws near.

"If we don't get anybody by the time we get back from Estonia - to me, it's counterproductive to bring anybody in at that point," he told reporters after Friday night's practice at Meralco gym in Pasig City.

The national team is set to fly to Europe for a pocket tournament next week, and Baldwin is looking at their return the country as a possible deadline for Gilas call-ups.

So far only 15 players - 17 including Andray Blatche and Jimmy Alapag - have been regularly showing up at practices, and any more tinkering could cause further backlog in the team's preparation.

But Baldwin is willing to wait longer for one particular player - back-to-back PBA Most Valuable Player Fajardo.

"The exception I will probably make to that is June Mar," he said. "I said from the very beginning he should be the centerpiece of this team. We need him."

Fajardo is currently nursing plantar fascitiis on both feet, an injury he has been enduring since the playoffs of the PBA Governors' Cup. It cast a doubt on his availability to suit up for Gilas, but Baldwin is prepared to wait for him to heal.

"We understand his injury is one of those nagging things that doesn't have a time table," he said. "Because it doesn't have a time table, I'm not gonna put a time table on him."

The coach, however, is not going wait forever.

"Eventually we'll have to say it's too late," Baldwin said. "But right now because it's an injury situation for him and nothing else, I'd say the door will open for him longer than it will be for anybody else." - JST, GMA News