UK hoops notebook: Shooting focused coach

In hospital, UK assistant Antigua found passion for game

By Jerry Tipton / Herald-Leader Staff Writer

Survivor of a bullet wound to the head. Accomplice in arguably Kentucky's most painful loss in Rupp Arena. Shaker of Nelson Mandela's hand.

No one can say Kentucky assistant coach Orlando Antigua's life hasn't had compelling moments.

That life nearly came to an end when Antigua was a high school sophomore. On Halloween night, he and a friend were walking along a New York City street when they came upon a group of people arguing.

Someone threw an egg. After dodging the egg, the man made eye contact with Antigua, pulled a revolver and shot him near the left eye.

Antigua staggered, then fell on the hood of a parked car. As he held the side of his face, he shouted, "He shot me! He shot me!"

A police officer quickly arrived at the scene. Antigua approached him, but in the confusion, the officer shoved the wounded man to the street hard enough to break a collarbone.

Then the story takes an even wilder turn.

"I hear an ambulance," Antigua said. "I get up and start chasing it."

The ambulance is taking someone else to a hospital. But seeing a man bleeding profusely, it slows to a stop, and then takes on a second emergency patient.

"I thumbed it," Antigua said of the trip to the hospital.

As he lay in a crowded hospital awaiting medical attention, Antigua's life did not flash in front of his eyes as much as its future possibilities came into focus.

"It helped me appreciate my family and the opportunity to live," he said. "I also recognized how much basketball meant to me. To recognize that passion that early helped me put in the work I needed to try to be successful."

Twice doctors scheduled a surgery to remove the bullet. Twice they concluded the operation was too risky. The bullet could be removed, but Antigua could lose his hearing and/or eyesight.

"They felt the body would naturally push it in time to a place where it could easily be extracted," Antigua said of the bullet. "That time came my junior year at Pitt."

While playing in Puerto Rico in the summer, Antigua noticed blood and puss coming out of his left ear. By sticking a finger in the ear, he could feel the bullet.

Once back at Pittsburgh, he underwent a two-hour procedure in which a doctor extracted the bullet through the ear canal.

No anesthesia. "Pretty painful," Antigua said before quipping, "I had to bite the bullet."

Thinking back, Antigua expressed thanks for basketball, which gave him a reason to persevere and put him in contact with top medical personnel.

When asked how the story would have turned out without basketball, he said, "I'd be like any other kid in New York. Who knows? Depressed. Sad. You have a built-in excuse why not to succeed."

Antigua twice crossed paths with UK before accompanying new head coach John Calipari from Memphis. As a high school player at St. Raymond's, he drew the recruiting attention of then-UK coach Rick Pitino. He had played with two other future Cats on New York's famed Gauchos: Jamal Mashburn and Andre Riddick.

But a week before he was to make a recruiting visit, Antigua learned that the last available scholarship had gone to Aminu Timberlake.

Antigua went to Pittsburgh, where he contributed to the 85-67 victory at Kentucky in November 1991. That was the game that denied Pitino a triumphant return to New York in the Pre-Season NIT. Darren Morningstar and Sean Miller starred for Pitt in that game, while Antigua contributed nine points and eight rebounds.

Antigua recalled Pitt coming into the game with a chip on its shoulder.

"We had a bunch of guys on the team from New York," he said. "We understood that everybody (on UK's team) was already purchasing tickets to go back to New York for the NIT.

"That kind of fueled us a little bit."

After college, Antigua pondered his basketball future. He grabbed the chance to be the first Latino player for the Harlem Globetrotters.

"It was a great experience," said Antigua, who was born in the Dominican Republic. "I met a lot of people."

Surely no one made a deeper impression than Mandela, who inspired a movement that ended apartheid in South Africa. He later became that country's president, the office he held when he welcomed the Globetrotters for a charity performance on his birthday.

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UK hoops notebook: Shooting focused coach

In hospital, UK assistant Antigua found passion for game

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