SAN JUAN (William Rosario's Somewhere in the Americas) - Back when the Uruguayan Basketball Federation was celebrating its 100th birthday two weeks ago, around the office we started one of those run-of-the-mill 'Top 5 of All-Time' for each of the historically elite countries in the Americas. We went through all of them and by the time it was Puerto Rico's turn, the conversation had become heated and beautiful like they do when one is fully invested in a totally subjective view.

There were the obvious picks in Jose 'Piculin' Ortiz (him being right there in the room made it even more obvious), Raymond Dalmau and Teófilo Cruz. Point guard great Juan 'Pachin' Vicens joined the unanimous list pretty quickly. And then, we had our opening. Lots of names came up like Jerome Mincy, Ruben Rodriguez, Georgie Torres and two contemporaries in Jose Juan Barea and Carlos Arroyo.

I had Mincy as my fifth one, I'll admit. But it got me thinking about the two younger guards, Barea and Arroyo, that I've had the opportunity to follow for their entire career.

Puerto Rico has actually been unlucky in the fact that the two greatest players of the current generation occupied the same position and territory on the court. Both are scoring point guards that need to have control of the basketball to be effective and when they have played together in the national team, the results haven't been great.

It's a shame, because winning record aside, there's no denying they are all-time talent.

Arroyo, 35, is now in the last part of what has been an excellent international basketball career that includes four medals in the FIBA Americas Championship (2 silver, 2 bronze), four medals in the Centrobasket Championship (3 gold, 1 bronze), four appearances in the FIBA Basketball World Cup and a signature performance in his only Olympic Games appearance in the victory against the USA, in which he scored 24 points and seven assists. (He averaged 19.3 points per game in Athens and 21.2 points just two years later in the 2006 FIBA Basketball World Cup in Japan).

In Puerto Rico he's actually called 'Papa FIBA', as they consider him a clutch performer in the international game.

His professional club career has been pretty good too. Arroyo played nine seasons in the NBA for seven teams with respectable numbers including double figure averages over the course of two seasons with the Utah Jazz and the Orlando Magic. He made it to the Finals with the Detroit Pistons and almost won a championship when they lost in a seven-game series to the Spurs in the 2004-05 season.

After leaving the US, he became a superstar in Turkey playing for both the Besiktas and the Galatasaray, winning the Eurochallenge with the first one and the national league title with the second one.

But everything began for him in the Puerto Rican national league, the Baloncesto Superior Nacional (BSN).

Arroyo got his start in the league when he was only 17 years old and after his second season with his hometown Cariduros de Fajardo, he became a member of the Piculin-led Cangrejeros de Santurce. There he won a total of five championships in six years.

And now, after an unfortunate ending to his Turkish basketball career, Arroyo is back with Cangrejeros and Puerto Rico is buzzing with his return. His first game this past Thursday was in front of a sold-out 10,000 plus home crowd, a very rare draw in the regular season for the national league.

This comeback story is important. It will be the first time since Piculin left in 2005 that Puerto Rico will have one of its icons playing in the island. Ten years. Ten tough years where the league has regressed almost to the point of irrelevance in a heavily influenced USA/NBA environment. Long gone are the eras where one could find iconic great national team players in every franchise. Arroyo has brought that excitement back to the competition.

We'll see and hope he stays healthy in a very demanding schedule of the league. Unfortunately, the injuries have caught up with Arroyo in his last sightings for Puerto Rican fans, the latest keeping him out of Spain 2014. But this promises to be an exciting last run, last chapter to his career.

I still would not put him in my Top 5, but I certainly respect what he has done for Puerto Rico and international basketball. He's right there, on the outside looking in, but that's no shame in a historic basketball country with an endless tradition in the game. Arroyo is top-notch, one of the greats and very deserving of all the love and cheering that's coming his way in this return to Santurce.

William Rosario

FIBA

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