Puerto Rico defeated the United States in the first match in Athens 2004, the first Olympic team to do so since Seoul 1988. Carlos Arroyo and Eddie Casiano, the protagonists of that victory, now lead the team seeking the return ticket to the Tokyo 2020 Games at the 2021 Basketball Pre-Olympic
On his way to the bench, after scoring the two free throws that sealed the victory over the United States, Carlos Arroyo stood in the middle of the court and grabbed his shirt to highlight the name on his chest. ‘Puerto Rico’.
The Caribbean island had just made history at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. It was the first team to defeat the United States since it began to call NBA players for its basketball team in Barcelona 1992. But behind the gesture and the triumph there was much more meaning.
Of course, the year before they had starred in an intense duel at the 2003 FIBA Americas Championship, at Tracy McGrady and Eddie Casiano had their pluses and minuses after some unsportsmanlike action by the American player.
And veterans probably also remembered the words of Bobby Knight, the former United States coach, during the medal ceremony at the 1979 Pan American Games, held in Puerto Rico.
After beating the host team in the final, Knight declared to the microphones: “The only thing that [los puertorriqueños] they are good is growing bananas ”.
But for many, Arroyo’s victory and gesture were also a sign of their island’s pride. Puerto Rico has the status of a Commonwealth of the United States, but in sport it competes under its own flag.
The United States came to the Olympics with the mission of making up for the stumbling block in the 2002 Indianapolis World Cup. Although it was an inexperienced team, those young people were called LeBron James, Dwyande Wade, Carmelo Anthony, or Amar’e Stoudemire, and in front there were Tim Duncan, Allen Iverson or Stephon Marbury.
Talent was not lacking.
But in the first match of the 2004 Athens Olympics they met an ambitious Puerto Rican team. It was an irreverent group where Carlos Arroyo shone, a small but determined point guard with a great scoring talent, who had just signed his best season in the NBA with the Utah Jazz.
Eddie Casiano and Larry Ayuso added the fireworks from the perimeter, while inside Daniel Santiago and the leadership of the legendary José ‘Piculín’ Ortiz stood out.
For Arroyo (24 points, 7 assists) and Casiano (18), it was one of those games in which everything they threw to the basket seemed to end inside. A supreme confidence that spread to the rest of the team.
After an even start, where the Puerto Rican advantage was already a small surprise (21-20), Puerto Rico dynamited the game with an amazing second quarter in which they won 28-7.
Despite the United States’ attempts to react in the second half, Puerto Rico remained ahead until the victory was sealed with those two free throws and that gesture from Arroyo. A moment that has gone down in the history of Puerto Rican sports as ‘El Arroyazo’.
“I know that for many, our performance that afternoon in Athens marked their lives in the same way that it changed ours,” Arroyo shared on his social networks in 2020. Well, even today, that game is remembered every August 15.
That game, and the subsequent bronze after falling in the semifinals against the Golden Generation of Argentina, would mark a turning point for the United States team, which changed the structure of its team to regain an Olympic hegemony in Beijing 2008 that it still maintains today.
For Puerto Rico, it would be the peak moment of those Olympic Games, where it would lose in the quarterfinals against Italy. But also for a while, because since then he has not returned to an Olympic event and his participation in the World Cups has been discreet.
This summer, Puerto Ricans have the opportunity to get a return ticket to the Tokyo 2020 Games, in 2021. The team participates in the Basketball Pre-Olympic, where after a first match against Italy, their executioner in Athens 2004, they will play the semifinals.
The team that disputes the Pre-Olympic in Belgrade, Serbia, is led by Gian Clavell and the promising Isaiah Piñeiro. And 17 years later, he still has ties to that Puerto Rico team that surprised the world in 2004.
The coach is Eddie Casiano and, since last May, the manager of the national team is Carlos Arroyo. Living memories of the day Puerto Rico shocked the world at the Olympics.
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