Julio Toro
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Julio Toro (born 1952) is a Puerto Rican basketball coach, and arguably one of the most successful head coaches in Puerto Rican professional basketball history.
Toro, who is also a lawyer, is an expert in philosophy. Many newspaper writers also know him for his charasteristically philosophic answers to questions. As a matter of a fact, his nickname is "the philosopher of basketball".
Toro coached the Guaynabo Mets to the BSN championship in 1980 and 1982. He also coached that team to the league's finals in 1981 and 1983. In 1989, after stints with other teams such as the Bayamón Cowboys, Toro again coached the Mets to a championship, beating the Ponce Lions in seven games. The Mets reached the finals again in 1990, that time, losing to the Lions in a longly awaited rematch of 1989's finals. During his tenures as coach of the Mets, he had players such as Mario Morales, Federico Lopez, Francisco Leon, and others.
During the early 1990s, Toro was signed by Carabobo of the Venezuelan professional basketball league. After coaching Carabobo to various titles, he also became a celebrity in Venezuela. Back in Puerto Rico to coach the Santurce Crabbers, he led the then expansion team to four league titles in a row, from 1996 to 1999, with players such as Carlos Arroyo and Jose Ortiz under his direction. In 2002, he won another BSN title with the Crabbers.
Toro was named head coach of the Puerto Rican National Basketball Team in 1999, and he has remained on that position ever since. He has been to two Tournaments of The Americas, two Centro Basket Tournaments and one World Tournament (2002) as head coach of the Puerto Rican national team. At the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, he made history by becoming the first non-Soviet coach to defeat the United States during Olympic competition, only the third coach to do so, and the first coach to defeat the so-called Dream Team at an Olympic game, when Puerto Rico beat the United States, 92-73, during the tournament's first game for both teams.
