Basketball in Cuba

Apparently in keeping with the current love fest with the Stalinist government of Cuba, we learned that in conjunction with the Cuban Sports Ministry, the NBA will soon be in Cuba (NBA taking its game to Cuba to ‘share values of game,’ April 7).

My father, Raul Garcia Ordonez, was one of Cuba’s leading basketball players. He made his first national team at 18 and represented Cuba in many events, including the 1948 Olympic games in London and the first Pan American Games in Buenos Aires in 1951.

Soon, there will be cruise ships, full of tourists heading down to Havana to enjoy, not the ruins of a civilization, but the spectacle of Cubans living among the ruins.

But please don’t insult my intelligence and tell me that Cubans need the NBA to teach them how to play basketball. My father’s 1951 Pan American team won a bronze medal in an era when the only notable professional American team was the very un-NBA Harlem Globetrotters, who, apparently remembering something about freedom, only played in Cuba when Cuba was free and invited my father to play with them.

This story was originally published April 12, 2015 at 3:00 PM with the headline "Basketball in Cuba."