Evelio Droz

Evelio Droz was a Puerto Rican basketball player whose career spanned from 1957 to 1970. Droz spent the whole of his professional career playing for Vaqueros de Bayamón in the Baloncesto Superior Nacional, winning the league with the team in 1967 and 1969. He went on to play in 260 matches for the side and scored almost 4,000 points, with an average of 14.8 points per game.

Droz was also a key member of the Puerto Rico men’s national basketball team. In 1959 he won silver with the side at both the Central American and Caribbean Games in Caracas and the Pan American Games in Chicago. One year later he competed in the basketball tournament at the 1960 Roma Olympics, before winning bronze at the 1963 Pan American Games in São Paulo. Droz returned to the Olympics for the 1964 Tokyo Games, where Puerto Rico just missed out on a medal after finishing fourth. His final major international tournament came two years later, with Droz capping off his career with gold at the Central American and Caribbean Games in front of a home crowd in San Juan. He was later inducted into the Puerto Rican Sports Hall of Fame in 1997.