Sometime this weekend, just before Twitter went down, rumors started swirling around the Internet that Smart Gilas Pilipinas national team coach Rajko Toroman was leaving the squad. The rumor was vague, as most rumors are, about whether he resigned, or he was fired. I would usually just laugh off the rumors like this, but I’d just written about the ongoing mess within the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas last Friday, so I checked with my Gilas sources about it.

The rumor reached fever pitch when even Eric Altamirano, who coaches the national youth team, asked Toroman if it was true. Charles Tiu reported on Twitter that it wasn’t.

With that out of the way, Toroman made an appearance alongside team captain Chris Tiu and the rest of Smart Gilas at GMA-7’s Sunday noontime variety show Party Pilipinas yesterday to promote a Gilas feature on QTV. Toroman even ended the segment by speaking to Heart Evangelista and Raymond Gutierrez about the team. Awesome. Maybe next time GMA-7 can bring Coach and the players in for Spin It, Win It.



One thing I noticed: Raymond Gutierrez looks bigger than Chris Tiu. Can he play? Maybe we can get him to add size to the Gilas backcourt. The team looks like it’s going to play in the Stankovic Cup despite being depleted. Maybe Raymond can be the next Bogs Adornado *wink*

(By the way, if you can’t get enough of Gilas, make sure to check out Charles’s feature on YoungStar from last week. Lots of details about the team’s trip to Taiwan for the Jones Cup.)