I’m proud to announce that he decided to come back to the program.

JASON Castro steps out of retirement to suit up for Gilas Pilipinas. ROMAN PROSPERO

It seems that there’s only one person who could stop Jayson Castro from formally retiring from the national team — Tim Cone.

The prolific American mentor halted Castro’s decision to hang his sneakers for good when he tapped him to be part of this pool of players that would see action in the 30th Southeast Asian Games.

Castro was one of the 15 players named by the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas (SBP) to the pool and Cone was elated to see the two-time International Basketball Federation (FIBA) Asia Championship Mythical Five member donning the national colors again.

“I’m proud to announce that he decided to come back to the program. We have asked him to come back and join the program. I’m really proud of the fact that he decided to come back to help us out,” Cone said.

“I think we all know we all know that he was one of the big missing links in the last try we had,” he added.

The 33-year old Castro begged off in Gilas Pilipinas’ campaign in the FIBA World Cup in China where the Filipino dribblers finished last in the 32-nation tournament.

And it only took a phone call from Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) chairman Ricky Vargas of Talk ‘N Text to convince the KaTropa guard to come back and help the cause of the national team.

“It was supposed to be me who was going to ask him because, as we all know, he is already retired,” Cone said. “But the (PBA) Board (of Governors) wanted to know right away, so Mr. Vargas called him and said we’d like you to unretire and come back and he said right away that he’ll do it.”

Castro was instrumental in the Gilas Pilipinas’ historic campaign in the 2013 Fiba Asia Championship, which the country hosted, to earn a spot in the 2014 World Cup in Spain.

That earned him his first Mythical Five selection and he repeated it in 2015 when he led the squad of coach Tab Baldwin to a silver-medal finish.

The core of Ginebra made up the 15-man pool of Cone namely Greg Slaughter, Japeth Aguilar, LA Tenorio, Scottie Thompson, Stanley Pringle and Art de la Cruz.

Also in the pool are Beermen June Mar Fajardo, Marcio Lassiter, Christian Standhardinger and Chris Ross, TNT KaTropa’s RR Pogoy and Troy Rosario, Alaska’s Vic Manuel and Matthew Wright of Phoenix.

Cone admitted trimming down the pool to 12 will be difficult and he’ll just pick the players who can fit in immediately given a short period of time to prepare.