A decent Q&A with Orlando Antigua who as expected is going to be promoted to Assistant Basketball Coach at Pitt. Maybe a little too much talk about being with the Globetrotters. He is yet another guy who decided to settle down in Pittsburgh. Not coming back home, but making Pittsburgh his home.
Q: Is that why you retired?
Antigua: I was getting to the point where I knew I wouldn’t be able to play forever. I wanted to start the next phase of my career. I worked for Pat Cavanaugh’s company in the North Hills and got some great experience in the corporate world there. When I was there, I worked with Joey David on his staff at Mt. Lebanon and then came the opportunity to be a part of coach Dixon’s staff.
Q: Did you always want to be a coach?
Antigua: I wasn’t sure. My brother was a coach. Sometimes, as a player I thought I was a coach (laughs). I was always intrigued by the strategy of the game, the game-planning. Being the director of basketball operations that gave me an idea of the administrative side of things, and I got to see whether I wanted to be involved in the coaching aspect.
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Q: You’ve had opportunities to leave Pitt for assistant-coaching positions the past couple of years. Why did you stay at Pitt?
Antigua: It’s home. It’s where a lot of my opportunities have flourished. Even when I was a Globetrotter, I never really left. I’ve always lived in Pittsburgh. It’s the university that gave me an opportunity to earn a degree, and I’ve met some wonderful people here. That’s one of the reasons I have a tattoo of a Panther on my arm. It’s a reminder of no matter where I go, I’ll always be a Pitt Panther. I had the opportunity to help mold some very good players here. It was a great opportunity to show my passion for the university.
As a brief, unrelated to sports, digression, these are the kind of stories the City of Pittsburgh needs to keep in mind and should promote. People who come from elsewhere to live and settle in the city. It’s all well and good to want to keep the people born and raised in the area around — and don’t I hear enough about the ‘brain drain’ complaint in Cleveland — but just as important is getting new people coming and staying.
People who don’t just talk about how the city was and aren’t tied to those things, but want to go forward in the city and community. People who fall in love with the area, find it comfortable and want to make it home. As a non-native Western PAer who went to Pitt and loved the city and misses it, I enjoy reading things like that and the way recent commit Pat Bostick spoke of the City as well as the school.
Q: Which Pitt player will surprise the most next season?
Antigua: That’s a great question. I would say probably Levon [Kendall]. Actually, it’s a toss-up between two or three guys. I would also say Ronald [Ramon] and Sam Young. Sam is just starting to scratch the surface of the player he can become.
How many would have expected him to say Kendall? As long as Kendall’s back doesn’t cause him big problems he could be very important to the inside game. Especially if Gray doesn’t come back.
