Just hours after getting off the plane, Andray Blatche quickly buckled down to work, wasting no time as he joined the Gilas Pilipinas practice on Sunday.
After several delays in his date of arrival, Blatche finally reunited with the squad with less than a week before the SEABA Championship.
The naturalized Filipino is now experiencing the effects of jet lag after a gruelling journey.
“I flew from Atlanta to LA was like five hours, then two hours layover then 11 hours from LA to here,” Blatche said. “It’s hard to sleep on the plane, then when I got here it’s hard to go back to sleep. But I’d like to go back in the room to go back to sleep.
“It’s good to be back on the court with the guys. But I’m extremely sleepy.”
Despite that, Blatche still picked up the Gilas Pilipinas’ schemes in the dribble-drive offense.
“I think the big advantage with Andray is he already knows the system and he knows what we want to do on the dribble-drive, so we just have to catch him up to speed with the other things with what they’re doing,” coach Chot Reyes told a small group of sportswriters.
Former Gilas team captain and now an assistant coach Jimmy Alapag, who teamed up with Blatche in 2014, wasn’t surprised with Blatche quickly fitting himself with the system.
“He’s been here several times, so he didn’t have difficulty adjusting. He is used to a lot of things here in the Philippines – the weather, our team’s system and the coaches and players he used to play with before,” Alapag said.
But with Blatche still having jet lag, the team will be having a twice-a-day training starting Monday to help him adjust. .
“For someone who just got off the plane, he looks pretty good. Pero alam naman natin ang epekto ng jet lag it’s going to hit him two days from now. Tuesday is going to be his worst day kaya we decided to make it as our off,” Reyes said.
“He will feel it a little bit more tomorrow, pero ang tama talaga niyan is Tuesday. We’re giving the team a day off on Tuesday. Hopefully, Wednesday onwards he’ll be getting his legs back already.”
