Antigua's Made for Movies Story Makes Him Relatable to Those Most in Need

Bullets, homelessness, months without mom, saints when needed highlight new Arkansas assistant's tale

University of Kentucky assistant men's basketball coach Orlando Antigua helped Gage Durrett, 9, learn how to spin a ball on his fingers. / Pat McDonogh / Courier Journal via Imagn

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – People love a story of someone who had to overcome hard times.

Dusty Rhodes connected with people across the South with his infamous "Hard Times" promo, especially throughout rural Arkansas. "Hamilton" caught fire not only because of its catchy, unique way of presenting the revolutionary period of American history, but because it was built around the story of a man who had to overcome so many obstacles and tragedy.

It's also why new Arkansas assistant Orlando Antigua's story connects also. Much like Alexander Hamilton, his starts in what is historically known as the West Indies and involves a journey to New York that would be altered by gunfire and features time as a first of his culture in a famed American institution.

Needless to say, when it comes to the recruiting trail or simply sitting down to lunch with local residents, there's plenty he can share that will hook even the most anti-social cell phone addicts the country has to offer. He's truly a movie waiting to happen.

Long before he became a beloved coach, well before he became the first non-black player to star on the famed Halem Globetrotters, Antigua's exhaustive, dramatic tale began in the Dominican Republic. While he was a small child, Antigua's mother realized there was little hope for a strong future for he and his two brothers, so she made the difficult decision to leave her boys behind to emigrate to the United States in search of a job.

Not sure when they would see their mother again, Antigua and his brothers settled in and waited as the months began to pass. Finally, after three months, the call came and the boys left behind their home and grandmother to move to a dangerous area of the Bronx. They crammed into a small two-bedroom apartment with his aunt and two cousins.

There was plenty of opportunity for trouble, but the boys did their best to avoid it, latching onto a group of friends heavily invested in sports to avoid falling into a trap of drinking, stealing and doing drugs. Like many Dominicans, baseball was his first love, but a powerful, yet wildly inaccurate arm, a borderline fear of death at the plate, and a massive growth spurt finally led him down another path – basketball.

In eighth grade, his growth exploded as he found himself walking the halls at 6-foot-5. His height and instinctual knack for the game caught the attention of St. Raymond's High School, which chose to give him a scholarship and an opportunity at a different path in life theoretically away from all the potential trouble that awaited him otherwise.

Antigua has since said without that fork in the road, he might have ended up in prison or dead like so many people he left behind. However, that doesn't mean trouble didn't find him in the most terrifying of ways.

On Halloween night in 1988, a 15-year-old Antigua was walking down the street with a friend when they stumbled onto an odd scene at a major crossroad that connected various areas of the Bronx. It was early evening, prime time for when children often begin their trick-or-treating in places like Arkansas.

Antigua and his friend Juan noticed a crowd gathered around a group of men up ahead outside a business. The best he could tell as he tried to peer over the crowd, a security guard and a maintainence man were arging with a group of kids outside an appliance store.

While Juan climbed on top of a car so he could get a better vantage point to see what was actually happening, Antigua noticed four men dressed much nicer than everyone else, which set off alarm bells because of how out of place they felt.

In the midst of the chaos, someone threw an egg at the man. He dodged it as it slammed into the glass door behind him.

As the man scanned the crowd, his eyes locked on Antigua's and before he realized what was taking place, the man pulled a gun and began firing. All that registered was the sound, a flash and a burning sensation in his face. He fell down, crashing onto the hood of the car as he began screaming at Juan that he had been shot.

When he moved his hand from his face, two things clicked:
1. Blood was flowing everywhere.
2. Everyone was running in all possible directions, clearing a path between him and the shooter.

For some inexplicable reason, instead of running for cover, Antigua angrily made his way toward his attacker demanding to know why he'd chosen to shoot him, not comprehending the potential life-ending danger into which he was wandering, nor that a bullet had lodged in his head just millimeters from his eye.

Instead of getting an answer, or, fortunately for him, another bullet, a security gate slammed down, locking behind it the answer he desperately wanted. Behind him, the sound of an ambulance carrying another patient passed by.

Antigua ran it down and hopped on in hopes of getting treatment. All he recalls is thinking about how worried his mother would be because she wouldn't know if he's dead, how long the IV needle was, and a nurse saying she didn't see an exit wound.

As often goes in panic situations, the word that got back to his mother was a mixed bag of half truths and complete falsehoods. She had been told he'd been shot in the head, his eye is gone, he's brain dead, and even that he actually died.

While recounting the story in the years since, Antigua said it was too much for her to bear, so she had to be sedated before she could be brought to the hospital to see him. Somehow the bullet never made it into Antigua's skull.

It lodged itself in soft tissue near his temple, an area where almost all shots turn out to be fatal. The doctors determined removing the bullet would potentially do permanent damage to his eye and nerves, so they chose to wait until it naturally moved over time to a safer area.

Somehow he had taken a bullet to the face and walked away with a bandage and a black eye. He didn't even get stitches.

The bullet remained in Antigua's head for six years. Finally, in the summer of 1994, just months after Nolan Richardson's Razorbacks won the national championship, the moment came.

While playing in Puerto Rico to keep his game up between basketball seasons at Pitt, his ear began bleeding. He thought he had simply acquired an ear infection from swimming in the Carribbean, but, instead, the bullet worked its way into his ear canal where doctors reportedly removed it without even needing a local anesthetic.

A few weeks later, Antigua was back on the court and on a much appreciated second chance at a path that would lead him to becoming a McDonald's All-American and a basketball scholarship to Pitt, one of the United State's most prestigious academic institutions.

It's the stuff fairy tales are made of, except it wasn't smooth sailing, and when life got its darkest, it wasn't a fairy godmother, but a basketball coach who found a way to grant the wish he needed most.

Just before his senior year, his mother's personal problems caused the family to be evicted. Homeless with nowhere to go, the family scattered across New York City trying to find a way to make it through. His basketball coach, Gary DeCesare, found out the boys were separated from their mother and each other, crashing with extended family members and neighbors.

Empathizing with the boys' situation, he set out trying to find a way to help Antigua find stability and do what he could to reunite him with his brothers. He made arrangements for the boys to be moved into an old convent across the street from St. Raymond's.

The only way the school would agree to assisting Antigua was if an adult was there to serve as a live-in resident. Ultimately, DeCesare moved in also to serve as caregiver.

It wasn't much, but it offered lights, running water and a chance to be together in a setting that could be arranged into a dorm style abode. Most of all, it provided safety and easy access to the school.

It was a private school and there were still appearances to keep, so Antigua and his brothers would check to see if the coast was clear, then sprint across to the school and assimilate into the crowd as if they had arrived there as normally as everyone else.

This employment of ninja level invisibility went on for four months until life settled once more and the family could live in an apartment together again. He became student body president at St. Raymond's and once his story began to get out, he was awarded the U.S. Basketball Writer's Association Award for Courage.

It came with a $1,000 check, which would have meant the world to his struggling family at the time. However, he decided to create a bit of good karma and paid it forward to the program that stuck by him and his brothers when they needed it most.

He donated the money to St. Raymond's where it was used to buy new basketball goals for the team's court. It was his first taste of being able to do good for others through being part of the sport.

He had seen how impactful the game can be, especially to those who have little else on which to hold onto to keep them on a positive path. He also got a strong taste of how important it is to help those in need when having the means to do so, even if it is temporarily inconvenient.

There are a lot of players on the recruiting trail who know hard times. Antigua can relate with the most difficult of situations from a variety of backgrounds as he helps Calipari identify the next young men whose lives they can change.

They did it together at Memphis. They did it together at Kentucky. Now Antigua will bring his story to Fayetteville where he will use his experiences to make life better for young men in partnership for the people of Arkansas.

Hard times have value when handled correctly. If all goes well, Antigua and the Razorbacks will get to be part of something even more valuable than winning championships.

They can potentially save lives through showing love to those who need it most while providing opportunity in a state that was built on hard times and getting through them together. It's the deeper meaning and potential of one state, one Razorback, and now part of a path that began with a mom making a difficult decision all the way back in the 1970s.

HOG FEED:

• Arkansas football will start season earlier, locks up national TV spot for opener

• Alabama coach wants Tide to snatch legs, rip throat when facing Arkansas' Hagen Smith  

• Rashod Dubinion returns to the Razorbacks to compete in running back room

• Subscribe and follow us on YouTube
• Follow allHOGS on X and Facebook