One of the reasons the Tall Blacks vs Gilas game was played behind closed doors was the possible repercussions the Tall Blacks would have received from local media if they didn’t play well or if they lost the game. Loosing to a 45th ranked team (Gilas) , especially when the goal is to beat Australia would certainly not go down well in the local media. Make your own conclusions why the referee decided the game. But to be fair to the Tall Blacks this was really an unfair disadvantage when the team was just formed 24 hours ago. (they had a 2 day trails, just before Thursday) . So really the Philippines was only grateful that the Tall Blacks accepted our invitation to play them. After the game Basketball NZ asked me, if we did report the game results to media locally and the Philippines to provide some context. (e.g. the Tall Blacks were missing key players and was just recently formed)
The format of the game was actually still in question just before tip off, in our initial talks with the Tall Blacks, TB Head Coach Nenad suggested 6 quarters. I believe at the time he was thinking he would still have his 19 man pool available. Chot had apprehensions that this would be too taxing for the Gilas team , especially after just playing 5 games. So just before tip-off Coach Chot asked me to ask Nenad what the format was, which I did, to my and Gilas relief he agreed to an official normal 4 quarter game. Having said that the Gilas players were actually all warned that this could be a 6 quarter game and were prepared to play 6 quarters!
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