gilas draft was never a thing up until 2016 when TNT do not have a first round pick when most of the top prospects of sinag applied for the draft, and from not having a pick TNT was able to get Roger Pogoy one of the the top rookie prospects alongside Belo and Wright i do believe that without the gilas draft Pogoy will easily be a top 3 pick , i noticed that whenever there is a bunch of good prospects from the amateur ranks that also joined the cadet program this special draft was being implemented, though for the past 2 versions it was only the bottom 5 teams were given the chance to pick in the special draft, if overseas league did not come to picture for sure there will be another special draft for these cadet players and might be available for every team especially if the team of those who are running the show do not have a FRP, now its unfair to say that PBA do not give support to the national team except in 2011 , PBA represented Gilas in most of FIBA sanctioned competitions, even in the qualifiers for the 2019 world cup, after the pandemic most businesses were trying to recover their losses and PBA is also a business so its quite understandable that they did not participate in any post pandemic tournament , prior to the 4th window of the qualifiers and during the TAB era. but we all know what happened im just trying to point out that before the pandemic PBA always represents the country in FIBA tournaments and them trying to recover after the pandemic is the reason why they did not participate during the last run of TAB with the national team, and some of the players of that TAB team were those selected in the special draft
Even if the PBA players represented us from 2011 to 2020, the times when we needed PBA support was troubling. Support comes in quality players and quality practice time and prep time. It's not just how much the support came, it's how much we needed that support. Timing was also important.
2015 - June Mar, Japeth, and Jeff Chan were absent in the FIBA Asia Cup lineup. No SMC players but Pingris were in the lineup. At least we repeated our silver medal finish, and that roster was better constructed than the rosters from 2017 to 2019.
2017 Asia Cup - we only had two weeks to train for that tournament, thanks to the schedule.
2018 Asian Games - RoS and some other players represented us. I remember us considering pulling out of the competition if not for Yeng selecting many RoS players for chemistry, correct me if I'm wrong.
2019 World Cup - same as 2017. The team was also poor. Could have been better had the schedule been adjusted.
June-July 2022 window and 2022 FIBA Asia Cup - Erram was the lone PBA player, and the PBA season started during this period. I did say at the time the PBA players in the SEA games performed poorly, except for June Mar and Wright, and I was happy that those players won't represent us in the Asia Cup, but at least guys like Japeth would have been useful as rim protectors.
These are why I'm wary of our top Gilas players joining the PBA. When they're needed in international tournaments proper, little to no adjustments. SBP won't put its foot down either, because they're also PBA officials.