Orlando Magic interim coach James Borrego will become a bit of an experimental gym rat when he visits Havana for a three-day trip that begins on Thursday.
He doesn’t speak much Spanish. He doesn’t know much about Cuba. Never been, in fact. Not sure if he’s ever experienced the taste sensation known as a mojito.
But he knows basketball. And he knows about the power of sports to be able to bridge cultures and political ideologies.
Borrego crossed that cultural divide as a kid growing up in Albuquerque. By the time he reached the sixth grade, he had assimilated quite nicely in New Mexico. His family was of Mexican descent but now three generations removed from coming to the U.S.
He lived in a Hispanic neighborhood and wasn’t truly exposed to other cultures until he started attending Albuquerque Academy.
“What connected me with other cultures was sports,” he said. “Basketball really brought us together. They saw I was a pretty good basketball player. They said, ‘Hey, why don’t you join the game?’ and all of a sudden we have two, three and four cultures come together to play a game and from that those guys became my best friends.”
Borrego may not leave Cuba with a bunch of new BFFs, but he will undoubtedly have everlasting memories stitched together because of the power of sports.
There will not be a universal buy-in for the first joint basketball development camp in Havana, put on by the NBA and the International Basketball Federation (FIBA). Borrego, Steve Nash and others will be part of a team leading a four-day camp with the Cuban men’s and women’s national teams.
The Miami Heat lashed out to the league, saying Heat nor any of its personnel will participate in the event. It’s all about location, location, location for a franchise with strong ties to a Cuban-American fan base.
Reaching out to Cuba is an despicable concept to many Cuban-Americans. A lot of people — including Borrego — don’t quite grasp the vitriol. And so when he asked me to explain, I answered in more universal terms.
Fidel Castro is Hitler’s evil twin. Jewish people despise Hitler the same way many Cuban-Americans despise Castro. My deceased mother and father felt the same way as exiles. I picked up on much of that collective hatred, understandably so, but now I’m more ambivalent than angry after 50-plus years of isolation that have devolved into nothing more than a stare-down game of chicken.
Borrego will likely have a wonderful experience in Cuba, once you filter out all of the political nonsense. He will find the people of the country warm and engaging, pumped up that NBA ambassadors like Nash are in town, eager to press the flesh and take pictures.
People aren’t the problem. It’s the politics. Two nations that have been engaged in a cold war for over 50 years, separated by 90 miles of water and a zillion miles of political distrust.
Whether it’s Cubans and the NBA contingent in Havana, or white and black kids bonding with Latinos in Albuquerque, sports — unfiltered — is usually a great thing.
I think back on a trip to my homeland in 1991 when one of my second cousins, Pavel, reveled in a small parting gift from the Pan American Games: a USA Basketball T-shirt.
A son of a hard-line Communist, Pavel would cherish the shirt, turning down 100 pesos for the shirt months after I returned. I smile at the irony: Imagine the look on my cousin’s face when she saw her son wearing the symbol of American pride.
Sports can do that to people.
For Borrego, the gifts of understanding each other translated into two state high school championships.
“We’re bridging two cultures together using basketball, using sport to do that,” Borrego said. “I’m thrilled to be a part of that.”
The United States and China will always have ping-pong diplomacy dating back to the early 1970s when Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong famously shook hands.
But that’s so old-school. We’re moving onto the basketball buddies program.
Havana Daydreaming it is.
gdiaz@tribune.com Read George Diaz’s blog at OrlandoSentinel.com/enfuego
