Piculin Ortiz Dies at 62 After Colorectal Cancer Battle
piculin ortiz died Tuesday at 12:03 a.m. at 62 after battling colorectal cancer. His death removes one of Puerto Rico basketball’s most accomplished figures, a player whose career stretched across 24 years and left a mark on the national team for more than two decades.
Ortiz’s 24-year run
Ortiz built that resume from Aibonito to the international stage. He was a pillar of Puerto Rico’s national basketball team from 1983 to 2004, and his career included three Olympic Games — Seoul 1988, Atlanta 1996 and Athens 2004 — plus the team’s victory over the United States in Athens.
His path also crossed some of the sport’s biggest stages before and after the NBA. The Utah Jazz selected him 15th in the 1987 draft, making him the first Puerto Rico-born player chosen in an NBA draft, and he played two seasons with the Jazz after first starting his professional career in Europe with CAI Zaragoza.
San Germán, Oregon State, and FIBA
Before that, Ortiz starred at Oregon State University, where he was named Pac-10 Conference Player of the Year in 1987. He also began his Baloncesto Superior Nacional career with the Atléticos de San Germán, played his first 16 seasons there, and won championships in 1991 and 1994.
His national-team record was just as deep. Ortiz won bronze at the 1987 Pan American Games in Indianapolis, carried Puerto Rico’s flag at those Games, led the country to gold in Havana in 1991, and helped Puerto Rico finish fourth at the 1990 FIBA World Championship in Argentina, the nation’s best result in that event.
Final game before the loss
His late-career impact reached one more milestone in San Juan in 2003, where he posted 21 points, 10 rebounds, 11 assists and seven blocks in the Olympic qualifying tournament. That triple-double helped Puerto Rico reach the 2004 Olympic Games, and FIBA later inducted him into its Hall of Fame in August 2019.
Ortiz had been diagnosed with colorectal cancer in November 2023 and underwent surgery in January 2025 as part of treatment. His family announced his death in a press release.
