And then Saturday night, centers Lazaro Borrel and Hector Pino, guards Roberto Herrera and Angel Caballero, and a team masseur, Armando Rodriguez, said they were going out for some fresh air.
``We left the hotel and didn't go back,'' Borrel said Monday as the men held a news conference to announce their defections to the United States. ``We wanted to be free.''
U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman Ivan Ortiz said the men had not formally applied for political asylum, but noted that Cubans who defect after legally reaching U.S. soil are not returned to Cuba, unlike refugees found at sea.
The men left hours before their team was to face the U.S. team in the Olympic qualifying tournament. The Cuban team, missing its stars, lost 88-52 and was eliminated from the tournament.
Borrel, 26, said he had long hoped to leave Cuba and saw the trip to Puerto Rico as ``the perfect opportunity.'' It wasn't hard, he said, to find Cuban exiles willing to help him escape.
``I tried to make the contacts, we talked and we made plans,'' Borrel said. ``On Saturday, they communicated with us and told us if we wanted to, we could do it that night.''
Herrera, 24, said the decision was especially painful because his father, Ruperto Herrera, is the president of the Cuban Basketball Federation. His brother, Ruperto Jr., defected in Argentina in May. Herrera said he hoped his father would not be punished for the defections.
``It was a difficult decision, but I had to do it,'' Herrera said. ``They treated me well there (in Cuba), but I wanted freedom, I wanted to make my own choices.''
His father, in San Juan for the tournament, told The Associated Press, ``It's the hardest blow I have ever received in my life. It's the worst thing of my life ...
``My son has deserted the team and his country ... He's a traitor because he failed his country.''
He said his son was a ``national idol'' who ``enjoyed special treatment, he had everything ...''
The defectors said that as top athletes they had lived more comfortably than most in Cuba. Borrel was even a member of Cuba's Popular Assembly, the country's parliament.
``To me, they seemed like (politically) disciplined players, but people grow up, they think and they realize the situation they're in,'' said Andres Guibert, a Cuban player who defected in 1993 with 42 other athletes during the Central American and Caribbean Games in southern Ponce, Puerto Rico. He now plays in Europe and was attending the tournament in San Juan.
Dozens of Cuba's top athletes have defected during international competitions in recent years.
In May, Cuban baseball coach Rigoberto Betancourt Herrera defected during the national team's visit to the United States for a game against the Baltimore Orioles.
Baseball pitcher Orlando ``El Duque'' Hernandez fled Cuba in December 1997 and signed with the New York Yankees. Other defectors include Hernandez's half-brother, Livan Hernandez of the Florida Marlins, and major leaguers Rene Arocha, Osvaldo Fernandez, Rey Ordonez, Ariel Prieto and Rolando Arrojo.
In July 1998, three Cuban swimmers left a training camp in Puerto Rico and defected. Jose Perez defected after winning the bronze medal in the 400-meter hurdles during a San Juan meet in 1997.
© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press