JD has played for and against CTC long enough to know his tricks.
As far as Jared Dillinger is concerned, Gilas Pilipinas’ blowout loss to Jordan in the group stage was actually a good thing. In fact, he just stopped short of calling things one grand master plan—one that set up a final, golden finish.
“I think it is beautiful how he orchestrated this last game, and he got set in a perfect storm,” Dillinger said in his post on Instagram on Tuesday.
He then spoke of what he called the Cone “template,” which he believes was at play in Gilas turning the tables on Jordan in the finals.
“He has this template that he does—I played against it and I played with it. We will play against a team in the regular season, and let’s say we don’t do too well against them,” The Daredevil continued. “Coach, I know he won’t admit this, but he would prefer that we lose to this team in the beginning without showing them any of our main types of defenses or offenses, just so it’ll be a better setup for when we see them in the finals ‘cause they won’t have any ammunition against us.”
Dillinger might be on to something. In that loss, Gilas played well only for brief stretches—once in the first half and then at the start of the third quarter. Other than that, Jordan was in complete control, particularly in the fourth and final period, where it outscored Justin Brownlee and company, 28-10.
“I saw this exact same template happening with Jordan,” Dillinger insisted.
True enough, Gilas turned the tables on Jordan, leading practically every second in the rematch en route to a historic gold medal finish for the Philippines.
Of course, it does not really matter whether everything was some grand design on the part of Cone or not. What matters it that Gilas won gold—and Cone’s coaching had a lot to do with it for sure.