Orlando Antigua Leads The Dominican Republic To Their 1st FIBA World Cup

NEW YORK– Orlando Antigua, the head coach of the Dominican Republic men’s national basketball team that will play in its first ever FIBA World Cup next month in Spain, knows what it’s like to fight for something you want.

Antigua, a former Kentucky assistant who was named head coach at South Florida last spring, was born in the Dominican Republic to a Dominican father and a Puerto Rican mother. The family moved to New York City and lived in the Bronx where he became a star for Gary DeCesare at St. Raymond’s High and won a scholarship to play for Pitt. in 1990. But just two years earlier, when he was just 15, he saw his life flash before him. Antigua was a innocent bystander when an argument escalated outside an electronics store on Fordham Road in the Bronx and was shot in the head near his left eye with a 22- caliber gun. Antigua recovered, but doctors were unable to retrieve the slug. He was back playing two weeks after the incident and gained national attention as the kid who’d taken a shot to the head and survived to tell about it.

During that time, his family also went through a period of homelessness and Orlando kept them together until they could find a place to live.

Antigua overcome his personal difficulties to become student council president at St. Ray’s and lead the Ravens to the New York Catholic League championship, making Parade second-team All American. He signed with Pitt and helped lead the Panthers to an NIT and an NCAA appearance during his four year college career from 1991-95 .

Antigua spent his summers playing in the Puerto Rican basketball league and the Dominican League. Then, in 1994, the summer before his senior year in college, he began to suffer from a severe ear pain. He thought he had an infection however it turned out that the bullet lodged in his head had moved down into his ear canal Surgeons removed the bullet and Antigua has not experienced any after effects since.

He signed to play professionally with the Harlem Globetrotters right out of college, becoming the first Hispanic and non-black player on the Globies’ roster since Bob Karstens back in 1942-43. He represented the team in 49 different countries, including South Africa, where he met Nelson Mandela. In 1998, Antigua played with the Dominican national team, along with Franklin Western and NBA player Felipe Lopez that just missed qualifying for the Olympics before finally retiring in 2002 and getting into coaching..

Now, he is trying build a men’s national basketball program that is capable of sustaining itself from the youth development level on up. The Dominicans became a surprise participant in the World Cup when they finished fourth in the 2013 FIBA Americas tournament in Venezuela. The U18 men qualified for the U19 Worlds in Crete by virtue of a fourth place finish in the FIBA U18 Americas tournament in Colorado Springs. And the U15 boys, which will compete in next year’s U16 FIBA Americas tournament, could be even stronger.

This developing country with its population of just under 10 million located on the island of Hispaniola, has always been best known for the sport of baseball. Every major league baseball team has an youth academy on the Caribbean Island because there are so many young prospects there.

When Kentucky coach John Calipari agreed to coach the Dominican Republic for two years in 2011, his goal was to help the Dominicans develop a basketball culture and make a run at an Olympic bid. He finished one game short, losing to Nigeria in a last chance Olympic qualifier in Caracas. But he planted the seeds that his recommended successor Antigua is harvesting.

“Coach Cal had the vision for what he wanted to accomplish,” the 40-year old Antigua said. “He and I talked to the head of the Federation about this. We talked about developing the younger groups so we could develop a program and not just concentrate on the senior national team. I believe we have done that. We’ve identified the best young prospects on the island. The federation has done a great job of committing to developing youth programs and that’s going to give me longevity. We have coaches have done an unbelievable job working them them all year round in Santo Domingo. The 18s have qualified. The women have qualified. So there is a lot of success going on in the Dominican Republic.

”When you have that kind of success, you have more people wanting to come. That’s what’s been going on in baseball for years.”

To that end, Antigua has gotten his brother Oliver, the former coach of St. Raymond’s who joined his staff at South Florida, to help organize the grass roots and work as an assistant with the U18s. “The president and the Federation have really gotten behind us,” Oliver said. “He’s gone into all the towns and empowered the coaches and they do coaching clinics. In the past, we couldn’t find kids. Now, the local pro teams, the club teams are are helping out. We’ve kind of buried the local rivalries for the good of basketball in the country.

”They bring the best kids to a central location in the capital every weekend. They house them, feed them, train them, then then they send them back home. Some kids get on a bus for two or three hours.

The most popular player in the Dominican Republic is Jack Michael Martinez, a 6-8, 33-year old power forward and captain who has been on the national team since 2001 and has played in Italy and throughout central and South America during his career. He is capable of scoring double figures and made a huge game winning fade away in the lane in the final 2.5 seconds when the Dominicans defeated Kentucky, 63-62, in the final game of the Cats’ Big Blue Bahamas summer tour.

Martinez is known for his gritty play and seemingly fun-loving attitude. Martinez took the court against the Indiana Pacers’ Luis Scola in the 2013 FIBA Americas World Cup qualifier wearing a crazy mask after he suffered an nasty scratch in a game the week before at the Tuto Marchand Continental Cup.

Antigua has been able to influence a number of high level Dominican players with New York roots– former Louisville point guard Edgar Sosa and former U of L forward and eight-year NBA veteran Francisco Garcia, former Quinnipiac and current European rising star James Feldeine, who just signed to play for Cantu in the Italian League, former Pitt point guard Ronald Ramon, who plays in Brazil; and 7-1 center Karl Anthony Towns Jr. a Kentucky freshman who led St. Joseph’s of Metuchen, N.J. Jersey Tournament of Champions last spring and was ranked third nationally by ESPN after he reclassified so he could graduate a year early; to mesh with 6-11 Eloy Vargas, a former UK backup from Miami who plays for Metros de Santiago, guard Geraldo Suero, a former guard at Albany who plays for Titanes del Districto Nacional and a number of other current Spanish speaking Dominican stars to form the nucleus of a competitive Americas team that eventually may be able to contend in CentroBasket and FIBA Americas events on a regular basis.

“It does help to know these kids,” Antigua said. “You recruited some. You’ve watched them grow. A lot of them have the same backgrounds I do.”

The image of Dominican basketball took a huge step forward when the national team, which was coming off a 63-62 victory over powerful, pre-season No. 1 Kentucky in the Bahamas, played the United States in a pre-World cup exhibition at the Garden in front of 16,500 fans, many from the Bronx who made the pilgrimage in on the subway to root for their country.

“It’s such an honor to be sitting here with you guys talking about a game against the USA in the Garden,” the 40-year old Antigua said. “.It’s a Bronx tale. I got an email from one of our other assistants, who is in Europe scouting. And he goes, “When you step out on the court, don’t forget to pinch yourself.’ It’s special., special.”

Team USA won big, 105- 61 but that did not stop Dominican pride from spilling over .

“Forget about the score,” Oliver said. “We just got two hours of exposure for our team and our country, playing against the best team on the planet.”

Garcia and Feldeine each scored 14 points for the Dominican Republic and Antigua, understanding the significance of the moment, played everyone on the roster, including the bright, thoughtful Towns, a McDonald’s All American and a two-time participant in the Nike Hoop Summit who will be eventually be he face of the sport in that country.

“It was a very special feeling. Growing up as a Knicks’ fan, to stand in the same Madison Square Garden floor that Patrick Ewing touched, the floor that Walt Frazier touched, it just means a lot to me,” Towns said. “And to be here with my country means even more to me. There’s some things I have to work on, but I think we have a good stepping stone as far as how to succeed.”

Towns, who got a run that lasted 9:50, missed his only shot, grabbed two rebounds and committed a foul. He was matched up against 6-10 Anthony Davis, the star of Kentucky’s 2012 national championship team as a freshman, the first pick in the NBA draft and the cornerstone of Team USA.

“I’m hoping to be the best version of myself, just like him,” Towns said.

Towns, who was eligible for the Dominican to play because his mother is Dominican, was actually chosen to play the senior national team at age 16 and received valuable experience practicing with Calipari for two weeks in Lexington and playing in an exhibition game against Team USA that summer. “I felt much more comfortable out there this time,” he said. “Coach Orlando told me what I had to do to be successful Just run the ball and try to be an active as possible. I thought I did that today.”

This will be Towns’ only appearance with the national team. He will not be available to represent his country in the World Cup in September because he will be enrolled in college classes at UK at the time. “I’m a student-athlete first and committed to my studies at the University of Kentucky,” he said.

Towns actually played against the Dominicans twice this month wearing a UK uniform during the Big Blue Bahamas exhibition tour. “He impacts the game when he is out there,” Antigua admitted.

Towns has already been projected as a high lottery pick in this year’s NBA draft. “Just seeing Anthony Davis growing into this N.B.A. great, especially after his first year at Kentucky, it just gives me a lot to look forward to. At the same time, you’ve got to work just as hard as he’s worked, even harder, to be at the level that he’s at now.”We’ll have to see how that goes,” he said. “You never have a one year plan going to Kentucky. You have a four-year plan. I see myself getting my degree.”

If Antigua and Towns are the faces of the future in Dominican basketball, the program is in good hands.