Gilas Pilipinas will spend a pressure-packed week playing to qualify for the FIBA World Cup. The PBA, meanwhile, will be resting and retooling for when the Philippine Cup resumes.
San Miguel Beermen coach Leo Austria welcomes the long break as it gives his injured players a chance to mend. Blackwater Elite coach Bong Ramos will use the time to plot a way jumpstart the Elite after a 1-6 start.
The long break is part of the PBA's commitment to support Gilas, which plays Qatar and Kazakhstan in the sixth and last window of the 2019 FIBA World Cup Asian qualifiers this week.
The Beermen limped to a 2-3 start in the season-opening conference as new recruit Terrence Romeo and Alex Cabagnot recovered from injuries. Von Pessumal had a strong start offensively before being downed by flu, forcing him to miss a game. Veteran forward Arwind Santos suffered from food poisoning.
And Christian Standhardinger missed the team's last two games with a knee injury.
"It's a good time for Christian to heal from his injury. He's still undergoing strengthening on his knee which is part of the healing process," Austria told ESPN5 on Monday. "But this break is good for the team because at the start of the season, we were never complete due to injuries and illnesses on some players."
The Beermen hammered the Magnolia Pambansang Manok 113-92 on February 10 in the last game before the break. San Miguel, the four-time Philippine Cup champion is currently in fifth place at 4-3.
The long break also gives Romeo more time to jell with his new teammates and adjust to not having to carry a team's offense by himself.
The former three-time PBA Scoring champion had his best offensive game in a San Miguel uniform when he dropped 23 points on 8-of-10 shooting in the Beermen's 21-point rout of the Pambansang Manok.
"What Terrence simply needs is more time to play with his new teammates. And we can see that in our last game, he was able to play well, scoring 23 points in limited minutes. And for us, that's already a good sign," Austria said.
But the San Miguel coach isn't expecting Romeo to be the shoot-first type of player he used to be when he was still playing for NorthPort.
"He's trying his best to help the team not only in scoring, but he sets the play. And we see he passes first, which is what we want from him," he said.
The Beermen are not the only team fitting new players into their system.
Ramos said the struggle is part of the process for a team that just traded veterans Poy Erram and Nard Pinto, as well as Paul Zamar during the offseason.
"We're still working on a lot of things. We had a lot of lapses in our previous games and that's what we intend to work on during this long break," said Ramos, who gave his team two days off on Sunday and Monday.
Several rookies and more minutes for Chris Javier, Raymar Jose and Roi Sumang have contributed to the slow start.
"We lacked [tuneup] games. We have five new players so obviously, not everyone understands the system at this time," Ramos said.
With four games left in the elimination round, Blackwater likely needs to win them all in order to make the playoffs.
However, Ramos isn't thinking far too ahead. "We'll take it one game at a time and see how we play. I'm not looking yet at winning all our four games. I'm just thinking of our next game on March 1," he said.
Blackwater will be back in action on March 1 against the similarly struggling Columbian Dyip (2-3).
San Miguel returns to action March 8 against NLEX.