SAN JUAN (William Rosario's Somewhere in the Americas) - This week it was announced that Sergio "Oveja" Hernandez would reprise his role as head coach of Argentina's men's national team.

For the South American powerhouse, it means getting back one of the most recognizable and respectable faces in Argentinean basketball over the last decade, but what does it mean to everyone else in the continent looking forward to the 2015 FIBA Americas Championship?

It has been a weird couple of years for Hernandez. 

After taking part in one of the most dominating runs in the history of the Argentinean national league, with three championships in four years at the helm of the Penarol de Mar del Plata club, he's bounced around to where it looked like he was becoming one of those "I'll go wherever they pay me" coaches. 

But he kept winning. At the end of 2013, in just three months as the head coach of Uniceub/BRB, he led the team to the Sudamericana title against the home team Aguada in a hellish Uruguay full of craziness environment that broke every other team in the competition. He was poised though. Sergio has seen it all. 

In 2006, he took over a Ruben Magnano-coached Argentinean national team that had shocked the world by winning the gold medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics, and was able to sustain the momentum by leading the team to a fourth-place finish at the FIBA Basketball World Cup in Japan and claiming a bronze medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. 

Some people still consider the fifth-place finish Argentina achieved at the 2010 FIBA Basketball World Cup in Turkey to be Hernandez's greatest triumph as a head coach, taking a team that was missing Manu Ginobili and Andres Nocioni to great heights on the biggest stage. 

After his exit from the national team, Hernandez was coveted by every other major country on the continent who wanted him as their next head coach.

"I was really close to taking the job in the Puerto Rican national team in 2011," he told me a year ago. "I really like the players and I respect the great history and tradition our game carries in the island. 

"But I just couldn't. There were too many factors pointing to the fact that it would be a big mistake for me. Two big ones: first, I had just left the team (Argentina) a year earlier, and second, the championship was to be played in my home town of Mar del Plata. There was no way I was going to play against Argentina in my barrio. No way."

Then, this year it was announced that Hernandez would leave Uniceub/BRB to go to Puerto Rico to coach the legendary Piratas de Quebradillas club. The basketball fans on the island were elated with the news as they thought it meant that he was finally taking over the national team, after the firing of Paco Olmos.

It was a foregone conclusion that he was going to finally coach the national team, just as it was a foregone conclusion that Julio Lamas was going to return to the Argentinean squad. With that information, Puerto Rico's national federation acted as if it was a matter of time. And then boom, Lamas said no to coming back and Oveja was announced as head coach.

The differences between Hernandez and Lamas are pretty big. Hernandez is a "win now coach", whereas Lamas likes to invest and think about the development of the game. The announcement seems to indicate that Argentina's national federation will do everything in its power to not turn the page and instead have Hernandez hopefully coach the big names in their comeback to the continental troops.

For Puerto Rico though, this might mean the complete opposite. With Hernandez out of the picture, the national federation might have to accelerate the hiring of the coaching tandem that was thought of as the future of the national team. Former players Eddie Casiano and Rolando Horroutiner are the big candidates to take over as head and assistant coach respectively.

Casiano has won a Puerto Rican national league championship with the Indios de Mayaguez, as well as two Mexican national league championships with Halcones Rojos de Veracruz. Puerto Rican fans have been clamoring for him to be main man with the national team. This may be his moment. And after the disastrous performance at the FIBA Basketball World Cup last year, isn't it better to just clean the slate and start over?

This is a win-win for both countries looking forward to a 2015 FIBA Americas Championship in Monterrey that seems wide open in terms of the possibility of making it to Rio 2016 with the two spots available and Argentina, Canada, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Venezuela all with a real chance to win it all.

Hernandez's story is one of an exciting revival, while that of Casiano could be an intriguing premiere - if the Puerto Rican national federation decides to have him take over. They are still talking about naming a general manager first, so the decision may take a while. 

Given what happened at Spain 2014 with Puerto Rico being the last to confirm its 12-man roster and the exhibition game schedule, and then to see how that uncertainty and lack of cohesiveness translated to their performance in the court may be a bad sign looking forward. 

Let's hope not. 

Let's hope the administrative side of things doesn't affect what happens on the basketball side of things. 

Argentina are going through their darkest administrative period, with all the corruption charges and whatnot and seems to be coming out of it with a right sense of direction.

Puerto Rico, well… we'll see. At this moment, they seem to be two steps behind everybody else.

William Rosario

FIBA

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