The selections he came up with reflected the kind of team he envisioned.
Going against the advice to put together a group of role players capable of playing as a team, Cone didn't leave out any of the biggest names in the PBA in a veritable all-star squad that spent months getting familiar with his pet triangle offense.
Cone got the two best point guards at that time in Johnny Abarrientos and Olsen Racela; got the two tallest, most athletic wingers in Vergel Meneses and Kenneth Duremdes; then got the best shooters in Jojo Lastimosa and Allan Caidic, even if by then the 'Triggerman,' at 35, was past his prime.
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Most of all, Cone got size. Loads of it. He brought in 7-foot-1 EJ Feihl, 6-9 Marlou Aquino, 6-6 Jun Limpot, 6-5 Dennis Espino, and 6-4 Alvin Patrimonio. He also gave 6-10 Andy Seigle the final spot, relegating Jeff Cariaso to a reserve.
That Centennial Team won the Jones Cup but ran into problems, mainly from the lack of mobility of its big men and the players' inexperience in international basketball, when it lost to Korea in the Asian Games quarterfinals and to China in the semis, settling for the bronze after one final victory over Kazakhstan.
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In the intervening years, the American coach, born in Oregon but raised in the Philippines since he was nine, distinguished himself as the most successful coach in PBA history, but admitted that glowing resume has an asterisk as he always looked back to that Asiad as the 'biggest letdown' of his career.
"I was so devastated in 1998 when we didn't win it," Cone said after he laid the Ghost of the Asiad to rest by leading Gilas Pilipinas to the gold medal last year in Indonesia. "It brought back a lot of memories. I thought about that team a lot."
That Asiad success thrust Cone back into the middle of a Gilas program that was recalibrated after the tumultuous years under his pal Chot Reyes, this time given the free hand not only to draft the plans but also pick the players he wanted.
Cone gets the players he wanted
When offered the Gilas job, Cone took a while to say yes but from Day One it was apparent he knew exactly what he wanted and how he planned to go about it, perhaps because those ideas - all fresh but at the same time guided by the mistakes of the past, both old and recent, made by him or by other people running the program - had marinated in his mind for 25-odd years.
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"I was always a little shy to coach the national team because I felt a Pinoy would be better suited," Cone told SPIN.Ph when asked if he yearned for another shot after that Centennial Team disappointment, "but it was always a secret dream to do so."
PHOTO: Jerome AscanoThe timing of his return couldn't be any better.
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Twenty-six years is a long time and Cone, upon his return, found himself spoiled for choice in all the positions, beginning with two extraordinarily tall frontliners in June Mar Fajardo and Kai Sotto that solved the one overwhelming disadvantage all previous Philippine teams had to deal with: size, or the lack thereof.
Size matters
With those two building blocks, Cone proceeded to form a compact pool that had one obvious theme: size matters.
In the frontline, he backed up 7-3 Sotto and 6-10 Fajardo with 6-10 AJ Edu, 6-8 Carl Tamayo, 6-7 Kevin Quiambao, and 6-9 reserve Japeth Aguilar; 6-5 Justin Brownlee, 6-7 Jamie Malonzo, 6-7 Mason Amos, and 6-5 Calvin Oftana patrolled the wings; and in the backcourt he had 6-3 Dwight Ramos, 6-2 Chris Newsome, 6-2 CJ Perez and Scottie Thompson, who at 6-1 stood as the pool's smallest player.
Armed with a pool that had an average height of 6-6 and size across the board, Cone had exactly what he coveted in 1998: a team tall enough, talented enough and experienced enough that there were very few weaknesses to conceal, few mismatches to sweat over; that all the team needed to do was to play hard and play smart, and Cone to coach well to have a chance against some of the best teams in the world.