 Cruz was the first men's basketball player to compete at five different Summer Olympics.That feat was matched twenty years later by Brazilian player Oscar Schmidt, at the 1996 Summer Olympics, and later by Australian player Andrew Gaze, at the 2000 Summer Olympics, and by Spanish player Juan Carlos Navarro at the 2016 Summer Olympics.Cruz also played at the 1974 FIBA World Championship, in Puerto Rico, and at numerous Pan American Games and CentroBasket tournaments.