eGilas inspired by Asiad gold

eGilas team manager Richard Brojan isn’t leaving anything to chance and the Philippines’five-man squad is pumped up to duplicate the golden drive at the Hangzhou Asian Games in the eight-nation eFIBA World Finals in Sweden this weekend. The face-to-face video basketball competition began yesterday with eGilas taking on Lebanon at 8:30 p.m., Turkey at 10:30 p.m. and Morocco at 12:15 a.m. (all Manila time). If eGilas finishes first or second in its group of four, the Philippines will advance to the best-of-three semifinals today. And if eGilas survives, it will play in the best-of-three finals at 10:30 p.m. tonight (Manila time).

“We’ve got very decorated players,” said Brojan. “We all watched the Asian Games and we’re inspired. We’ll try to finish with a bang and win gold. For 1 1/2 months, we did a boot camp in Quezon City, training, competing and simulating 10 hours a day from Monday to Friday. Our entire production team was with us. It’s where we played the Asian qualifiers on-line. We’re prepared to win.”

The five players are Ice Alindada, 21, LCB Banzon, 30, Clue Gutierrez, 18, Social Mallillin, 19 and DonPrich Diez, 21. Banzon is the captain and point guard who patterns his play after Steph Curry or Chris Paul. He’s the lead offensive option. Alindada is like Paul George, a two-way player who scores and defends. Gutierrez is the lock-down defender who takes on the other team’s top scorer. Mallillin is like Draymond Green while Diez is the defensive anchor and last line of defense. “We’re a run-and-gun team, we force turnovers, play fast and chaotic,” said Banzon. “We don’t let scorers get into a rhythm. Ice and I take care of offense but Social, Clue and DonPrich hold our defense and defense wins championships. We’ve scouted our opponents and we know their tendencies. Turkey is tough in our group. If we make the semis, we could play USA or Brazil. We’re ready to make our country proud.”

The players created their own avatars and Diez, for instance, constructed a 7-1 image. Banzon chose the face of The Joker in the Batman movies to be scary and intimidating. Images can’t look like NBA players, a rule in NBA2K24 which is eFIBA’s video game of choice. eGilas’