Corey Webster deactivated his Instagram account after telling everyone that there was hometown cooking in their match against Gilas Pilipinas in his social media.
According to the NBL veteran, the Gilas squad played well, but they also had to contend with the referees.
First of all, yes, there is.
He's right.
Even the most honest nations would go dark at the sight of a gold-medal victory, a first-place finish, and a historic moment. It doesn't matter if two of the refs are Japanese, and the third official is Singaporean.
But here's the thing - it's the visiting country's prerogative to protect their selves at all costs.
Maybe New Zealand needs to check on the arena a couple of days before the event. Maybe they needed to listen to Tom Vodanovich, Converge's former import who finished his 2023-24 PBA Commissioner's Cup stint winless in five games, as per Wiki. OR MAYBE, the Tall Blacks need to research the current Gilas situation - from how they ruled the Asian Games in China and got the win on Latvia in their Olympic Qualifying Tournament.
The thing about Gilas is that they had a lot of hometown cooking situations in other places so unless it's blatant, they can just be okay with it. One can say that the historic Korea game in the 2013 FIBA Asia Championship and the lone China win in the 2023 FIBA World Cup are within that category. That said, one can also say that Korea and China should have known better. China might have tried to salvage their efforts by putting Justin Brownlee in a tumultuous situation after the gold medal victory, but during the Asian Games match, they struggled inside the court.
For Latvia and New Zealand, it's the case of getting the shock treatment. If we're going to say hometown cooking is real, we can also say that profiling and stereotyping go hand-in-hand with it. It's a case of underestimating Gilas Pilipinas because Oceania teams are far superior to the Asian squads. This is why we deemed it unfair that they are now part of the FIBA Asia region at the start. Before the match, New Zealand destroyed the Philippines on multiple occasions and this match could have gone either way.
But the thing about this situation is that Gilas had a virtually intact lineup. Georgia and Brazil were able to save their selves from a Gilas upset because they saw what they could do, and Tim Cone missed the services of Kai Sotto in the remainder of the tournament. Sotto once played in the Australian NBL and they could have at least scouted his game.
Hometown cooking works in both ways. While the Gilas versus Australia match never really involved any cooking, we certainly had an advantage when chairs, kicks, and punches were thrown by our players and fans. We also experienced similar kinds of scenarios in other countries. I know the New Zealand Federation has reprimanded Webster, but that doesn't mean that they are not going to vow revenge.
The best way to protect the players, as well as the victory, is through heavy preparation.