Tribute to Puerto Rican basketball legends

The passion for basketball has been a constant in Puerto Rican society in the past decades. In the past week, that has been noticed on the courts of the National Superior Basketball final between the Bayamón Cowboys and the San Germán Athletics, packed with fans pushing their respective teams to victory. Puerto Rican basketball, without a doubt, is going through a great moment.

And that passion has also been seen off the pitch in the past three months, with the publication of the special series Puerto Rican Basketball Legends, in which this medium published a list of the 12 best basketball players in our history. For the project, a panel of 13 basketball connoisseurs was recruited and each one was asked to submit a ballot with their 12 best players in the history of Puerto Rico. Since last May 16, this newspaper has published weekly a series of reports dedicated to each basketball player, delving into the trajectory of each one and explaining why he deserves to be considered among the best 12 in our history.

The series culminated on August 1, with the publication of who was chosen as the best Puerto Rican basketball player of all time, José “Piculín” Ortiz. The final list was made up, in order, of Ortiz, Raymond Dalmau, Carlos Arroyo, José Juan Barea, Teo Cruz, Juan “Pachín” Vicens, Georgie Torres, Mario “Quijote” Morales, Rubén Rodríguez, Johnny Báez, Jerome Mincy and Alfred “Butch” Lee.

As expected, opinions for and against the list abounded. There were plenty of players who equally deserved to be on the list, but they didn’t make the cut. Former basket players like Raúl “Tinajón” Feliciano, Ramón Rivas and Larry Ayuso, for example, also received a number of votes from the panel that placed them in positions 13, 14 and 15, respectively.

We recognize that there are former players who deserve to be on that list of 12, but at the same time we fully trust the process that we implemented to compile this historical “ranking”, with the collaboration of 13 respected figures in basketball. The panel was composed of Juan “Pucho” Figueroa, Armandito Torres, Chu García, Raymond Pérez, Ernesto Díaz González, Ibrahim Pérez, Rafael Bracero, Carlos Morales, Manolo Cintrón, Georgie Rosario, Francisco “Paquito” Rodríguez, Toñín Casillas and Julio Toro. .

To them, our total thanks for participating in the project and donating your time.

On Wednesday, the series was crowned with a discussion at Arena Medalla in San Juan, in which Ortiz, Dalmau, Rodríguez and Lee participated. It was an evening enjoyed by former players, characters from our basketball community, sponsors and subscribers to our newspaper. Between laughter and anecdotes, the four legends captivated the audience, who also connected to endi.com to watch the event live.

Happiness was evident in all those present at the end of the conversation. for us in The new day, was a wonderful opportunity to pay tribute to figures who have given us so much glory in sport, but that the younger generations, perhaps, do not know or have begun to forget. Through this project and its conversation, we were able to remember all those conquests and deeds of this group of athletes who on many occasions stood up the entire country.

As a country, we must work on that: not forgetting our sports legends, giving them more recognition in life, not leaving them in oblivion and giving them back the happiness that they caused us so much with their heroic acts in sports. This is a pending task for all of Puerto Rico. We as a medium will continue to contribute our grain of sand.