Mark Dickel waives off Reyes’ comments on international coaches

By Leobert Julian A. de la Peña

After former Gilas Pilipinas chief tactician Chot Reyes issued a bold statement that the best coach for the PH national basketball team would be a compatriot, interim head coach for Gilas Mark Dickel disagreed right away.

Dickel pointed out what Reyes said during his Hoop Coaches International Webinar by PBA team Blackwater Elite, an online coaches’ seminar.

“If it’s somebody from here, or somebody from Croatia, or France, or Australia, or wherever, then surely that person should be the best for the job. I don’t think it necessarily matters where that person is from,” Dickel said.

During his own talk in the Webinar, Reyes tackled the topic #PUSO and what it takes to for Filipinos to win in the international scene of basketball.

One of the topics he discussed with the other coaches was about the brand of coaching a Filipino coach can bring compared to international tacticians.

Reyes said that Filipino coaches possess the quality of “Puso” more than the international coaches because only a Filipino can capture the heart of a fellow Filipino, he emphasized.

For coach Dickel, Reyes’ comments did not bother him but he does disagree with it, especially now that he is the interim head coach for Gilas with no final name still released to be the main tactician of the national team.

“Whoever that coach is, if it’s me or somebody else, I’m sure he’s gonna be able to relate to the players, motivate the players, and get them to play how they want them to play. I don’t see that being such a big issue,” Dickel added.