Former Australian Boomers coach Andrej Lemanis could be set to be made head coach of the Philippine national basketball program.
During a coaching webinar he was asked if he would interested in the role he responded positively to the idea.
“All options are always on the table. As a coach, you always got to keep your options open cause it’s a profession. It is what it is. You got to go where the jobs are and the job is tenuous and every coach is a day away from being fired. Every option is always something you explore.” he said.
The team’s previous head coach Yeng Guiao stepped away from the role after what was felt to be a disappointing FIBA World Cup campaign in 2019. Guiao took full responsibility for the team’s poor performance and vacated the role in September which has yet to hire a full-time coach as his replacement.
Tab Baldwin, the program director of Gilas Pilipinas who is also a former coach of the New Zealand national team has had former Tall Black and NBL player Mark Dickel act as interim head coach while the programme decides it’s next move.
Dickel was thought to be a strong contender for the role given his Kiwi connections with Baldwin but Lemanis, who shares a Kiwi coaching background also thanks to his eight years at the helm of the New Zealand Breakers NBL team, would no doubt be a much more experienced candidate.
In his lone game so far as interim coach, Dickel led Gilas to a victory over Indonesia at the FIBA Asia Cup 2021 qualifiers in February.
It would be a unique turn of events if Lemanis was named coach for the Gilas, Lemanis was head coach of the Boomers when the now-infamous brawl between Australia and the Philippines back in July 2018.
Despite being witness to what was an unfavourable moment for Filipino basketball, the three-time NBL championship winning coach admitted that he was impressed the first time he saw how the Philippine national team played and the price they carried.
“What immediately stood out was the energy with which they played, how hard they played, and the passion which they played which I really liked. One of the things that I’m not aware of or underappreciated before I got in the international stage was how big basketball is in the Philippines.
“You can see that there’s the passion and the pride and they know that they’re representing the country and themselves, but they really commit to the game and you see a high level of skill that only comes because they’ve been playing the game for a long time.
The Brisbane Bullets head coach went on to say his popular flow offense, now being run by most NBL teams and many NBA programmes would be a perfect fit for the team given the intelligence of Filipino basketball players.
“I’ve run it in many different environments with many different players and again, it can be successful as long as it’s encouraged for the players to play to their strengths and make reads, and then the skill of the coach is to ensure that the players are playing in the positions or running the variations that most suit the guys that you have,” he said.
51 year old Lemanis was stepped down as Boomers coach in November to make way for his previous mentor and coach of the Philadelphia 76ers to return to the role.
Lemanis was coach of the Australian team from 2013 and despite squads featuring NBA players Patty Mills, Joe Ingles, Aron Baynes, Andrew Bogut and Matthew Dellavedova failed to lead the squad past fourth place.
Lemanis left the position having won the 2017 FIBA Asia Cup, the 2013 and 2015 FIBA Oceania Championship, respectively, and a 2018 Commonwealth Games gold medal… not to mention a high profile victory over Team USA’s in a World Cup warm-up game in Melbourne.