Jones Cup dispatch: Scenes from the SMART-Gilas practice

For the duration of the 2011 Jones Cup in Taipei, SMART-Gilas Pilipinas national team assistant coach Charles Tiu, brother of Chris, will be filing exclusive dispatches for InterAKTV.

Since I couldn’t sleep because of excitement — and because I had to watch video of Iran, our opponent tonight — I decided to just post a couple of pictures from Friday’s practice in Taipei.

Here was Asi Taulava practicing his hook shot — from the half court line. At practice, the team usually plays a game wherein the first person to make a shot from half court gets a small prize, but there was none yesterday.

This is the ring of the gym where all the Jones Cup games will be played. It reminds a lot of our guys of the hoops in open courts in the United States, minus the chain nets.

It seems to have two layers or something. The good thing is, all the teams will shoot on this ring too, so it doesn’t really matter. It might take some time to adjust to a Spalding ball too, since it is totally different from the Molten GL 7s, which are usually used in FIBA-Asia competitions.

Follow @interaksyon