Deconstructing Coach Chot's PBA selections

SMART-Gilas 2 head coach Chot Reyes announced his 16-man PBA Pool for the Gilas 2 earlier this week. These are the following individuals:

From Talk N' Text: Jimmy Alapag, Jayson Castro, Ryan Reyes, Larry Fonacier, Ranidel De Ocampo and Kelly Williams
From Alaska: LA Tenorio and Sonny Thoss,
From Petron: Alex Cabagnot and Arwind Santos
From B-Meg: James Yap and Marc Pingris
From Powerade: Gary David and Marcio Lassiter
From Rain or Shine: Gabe Norwood
From Barangay Ginebra: Enrico Villanueva

He has yet to announce the other half of the pool consisting of the players who are not yet in the PBA, led by Chris Tiu from the Gilas roster. Current Air 21 import and naturalized Filipino Marcus Douthit is also in, even with the planned naturalization of Denver Nugget and recent Manila visitor JaVale McGee already in the works.

I am not surprised with the six players from TNT, because those guys are the ones he's most familiar with, being their coach. Plus, they won the 3 of the last four conferences, and you cannot argue with that success. I am relatively surprised with JVee's non-inclusion, as well as Enrico's inclusion. Then again, a naturalized player will man the slot for at least 30 minutes, so that will be the least of our concerns.

What can we expect: a lot of small ball, transition, open court offense, something that has been en vogue as of late (look at Team USA under Coach K). We have designated gunners with Yap and David alternating in the role. There is an emphasis as well with defense, led by Marcio, who did such a great job for SMART-Gilas last time out, and Larry for TNT. You'll need someone who knows Chot's offense, so the entire TNT PG corps will do that for him. Sonny is an upgrade over Asi for the back-up big who can play alongside naturalized slot man. Think our backcourt's small? Ryan and Gabe can handle it. Even Larry can do it in a pinch. Marc is like Udonis Haslem. Arwind is like Josh Smith, even with his bad habit of shooting threes poorly.

It is important to stress this info out: Chot did express that the pool will remain fluid, so guys can play their way in or out of the pool.