A rebuilt Dwight Ramos is looking to earn a FIBA World Cup spot.
Ever since coming over to the Philippines in 2020, Gilas mainstay Dwight Ramos has always looked so sure of himself—confident, assertive, unshakeable.
So, it might come as a surprise that he struggled with his confidence only recently no thanks to an injured ankle that sidelined the 6-foot-4 guard for several weeks in the Japan B.League.
“Honestly in the past year, I was struggling with my confidence, with my jump shot, and with being in shape,” Ramos admitted to Quinito Henson in the latter’s Play It Right sports show.
Ramos’ ankle injury clearly bothered him months back, even admitting to One Sports how he kept overthinking it. And the on-court product reflected the 24-year-old’s mental struggles, as Ramos never quite got his groove back playing for the Levanga Hokkaido in the Japan B.League.
All that, though, appears to be history thanks to the work Ramos has been putting in.
“I just really took the last month and just kinda went straight home and had my own training camp with me and my trainer there,” Ramos said, recounting the grind he went through to rebuild himself. “We just locked in on the work, really, and it built my confidence. My confidence is real high right now, and I worked on getting in shape, focused on the diet, and I was working.”
Ramos was working, all right, telling Henson how the hard work often started at 6 a.m. with workouts “two or three times a day” and breaks only on Sunday.
With the work Ramos has put in, it appears he is back to where he was pre-injury—and may be even better. That figures to be great news for Gilas Pilipinas, which is now entering possibly the toughest stretch of its FIBA World Cup preparations.