Basketball in Puerto Rico and The Dominican Republic
Antigua was able to play basketball in Puerto Rico's basketball league and in the Dominican league because of his parents Puerto Rican and Dominican roots.
During his college years he would spend his summers (1994–95 and 1997–98) playing for the Gigantes de Carolina (Carolina Giants) a team which belonged to the Puerto Rican basketball league or as it is known in the island El Baloncesto Superior Nacional (BSN). During one summer, while Antigua was playing in Puerto Rico, he began to suffer from a severe ear pain. He thought he had an infection from being at the beach, however it turned out that the bullet that was lodged in his head had moved down into his ear canal. Surgeons removed the bullet and Antigua has not experienced any pain associated with the injury since.
In 1998, Antigua played for the National Basketball Team of the Dominican Republic which came close to representing the country in the Olympics and World championships for the first time in the history of its program. The team, however fell short in the qualifications. Among his teammates were fellow SBL player Franklyn Western, of the Vaqureos de Bayamon (Bayamon Cowboys) and NBA player Felipe López.
Read more about this topic: Orlando Antigua
Famous quotes containing the words basketball and/or republic:
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)
“Our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here, the people rule.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)