Bonus Episode from La Brega: Basketball Warriors

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2021

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Despite being a U.S. colony, Puerto Rico competes in sports as its own country on the world stage. Since the 70s, Puerto Rico’s national basketball team has been a pride of the island, taking home trophy after trophy. But in the 2004 at the Athens Olympics, the team was up against the odds, with an opening game against a U.S. Dream Team stacked with players like Lebron James and Allen Iverson. This episode of La Brega, from Futuro Media and WNYC Studios, tells the story of a basketball game that Puerto Ricans will never forget, and why he thinks now, more than ever, is a crucial moment to remember it. The documentary "Nuyorican Basquet" is here. If you want to see the famous photo of Carlos Arroyo, click here. To read more about sovereignty and sports, we recommend The Sovereign Colony: Olympic Sport, National Identity, and International Politics in Puerto Rico, by Antonio Sotomayor. CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified Hiram Martinez’s workplace in 2004 as El Nuevo Dia. It was El Vocero. The story has been updated.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's David Remnick, and we've got something a little special for you today on the podcast, a bonus episode.
0:10.1	It's a story from La Brega, a really interesting new series from our colleagues at WNYC and Futuro Studios produced in English and in Spanish, and we hope you enjoy it.
0:21.7	Hey, quick note, there are English and in Spanish. And we hope you enjoy it. Hey, quick note.
0:23.3	There are English and Spanish episodes of Labrega.
0:26.5	This is the English one.
0:28.0	If you want to hear in Spanish,
0:30.0	Vuelve to feed
0:30.8	and select a version with the title in Spanish.
0:38.2	Listener supported, W.N.Y.C. Studios.
0:44.9	FUTURO.
0:48.9	Heads up. There's some explicit language in this episode.
0:53.7	In the summer of 1979, journalist Julio Ricardo Varela was 10 years old,
0:59.4	and he was spending the summer with his dad in Rio Piedras in San Juan.
1:03.1	And it was the same year that the 1979 Pan American Games were happening and were being hosted in Puerto Rico.
1:12.6	It felt like it was our little mini Olympics.
1:19.2	For the opening ceremony, they commissioned this big Hollywood-style musical number.
1:24.6	And it was so exciting because here they were.
1:26.7	Here were all these athletes.
1:28.4	And when you're 10 and you're a sports freak like I am, that's all you were thinking about.
1:34.3	I mean, I was obsessed with it. I loved it.
1:40.2	Especially, he loved the Puerto Rican national basketball team.
1:48.0	La Selection Nacional.
	...

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