Ortiz?

[Peter Delevett <pdelevett@xxxxxxxxx>]

My apologies if somebody already posted this to the
list. I don't know Jose Ortiz, but good old Peter May
makes him sound like the Second Coming. Any
international hoop fans know anything about this guy?
Should the Cs bring him in? (Not saying that they
would, of course...)

>>Dropping the ball on Ortiz

The numbers still jump out at you, a week after the
fact: 21 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists, and 7
blocked shots. Which leads to one question: Why has
Jose Ortiz been unwilling or unable to land a job in
the NBA for the last 13 years? "It's pretty simple,"
said Warren LeGarie , Ortiz's longtime agent. "He
wanted to play in the NBA. But teams would never
guarantee him. People made up their minds about Jose
when he left Utah and, for whatever reason, they never
changed their perception. A lot of people in the NBA
are not receptive to changing their minds because then
it would admit that they were wrong in the first
place. So it's better just to exclude it." The man
universally known in Puerto Rico as "Piculin" is 39
years old but has a body right out of the Gold's Gym
calendar. He can still run the floor. He can rebound.
He can set screens. Watching him at the Tournament of
the Americas, you could come to no other conclusion
than that the 6-foot-10-inch Ortiz could do very well
in the center-challenged NBA, especially as a backup,
where his minutes would be monitored. Ortiz had his
near-quadruple-double against Canada in the cutthroat
bronze-medal game at the Olympic qualifier. Simply,
the winner went on to Athens, the loser went home.
Canada may have had a team pretty much consisting of
Steve Nash and 11 salmon fishermen, but Ortiz simply
overwhelmed them. And you left wondering why, even
now, no NBA team has called to bring him aboard. Ortiz
last played in the NBA with Utah in 1988-89 and part
of 1989-90. "Maybe if he had come to us a little later
in his career, it might have worked out better," said
Scott Layden, the former Jazz GM who signed Ortiz.
"Jose was a great player, the Pac 10 Player of the
Year [over Reggie Miller ] and he had great size and
could really run the floor." LeGarie said last week he
had not received a single call about Ortiz. Maybe he's
right. Maybe the NBA made up its mind a long time ago
about Ortiz and is collectively resistant to change.
LeGarie said he was close to a deal once with New
Jersey and Miami, but things fell through. Can you
imagine a guy like Ortiz playing in Miami? He'd be
huge. He certainly was against Canada. "He was always
good and agile and now he's an even more intelligent
player," said Canada coach Jay Triano. "A lot of NBA
teams could use a guy with that kind of size who also
can pass it the way he does."


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