In December 2004, the world was a very different place. Myspace had dominant market share. YouTube did not exist. Phones all folded in half for some reason. Layered t-shirts with spiky hair were just about still around, like an awkward rash. 50 Cent was unironically popular. Microsoft’s Clippy still had not quite gotten the message that we did not want his help writing a letter. And Brazilian guard Alex Garcia was partway through his sixth season as a professional basketball player, and his second in the NBA, which he spent in part with the then-New Orleans Hornets.
Almost 21 years later, Garcia has just completed season 27. And he has signed up for season 28. After all, why wouldn’t he – he is still good.
A recent look at another international player who appeared in the NBA in the 2004-05 season – Japanese point guard Yuta Tabuse, then of the Phoenix Suns – found that although Tabuse was still technically playing in his homeland – and winning championships – his playing role was mostly just ceremonial. Tabuse played a mere handful of garbage time minutes all season, and for all intents and purposes served as an additional assistant coach rather than a player.
Not Garcia, though. In his native Brazil, he is still one of the better players. And for what it is worth, he is seven months older than Tabuse.
Garcia’s American Foray
Born in March 1980, Garcia spent parts of two seasons between 2003 and 2005 in the NBA with both the then-Hornets and the San Antonio Spurs. He appeared in only eight contests over that time, as, in his eighth game, he tore his anterior cruciate ligament, ruling him out of the remainder of the 2004-o5 campaign.
Nevertheless, for an undrafted 6’3 combo guard coming from a nation without a consistent NBA talent pipeline, to make the NBA at all was a tremendous achievement. And to have made it twice speaks to the fact that Garcia’s incredibly high level of skill works anywhere.
It is that high skill level that has sustained his professional basketball career into the second half of his 40s, even as the athleticism of his youth has waned. Garcia has for three decades been a scorer of real pedigree, with a range of shots and a bag of tricks born out of guile, IQ and movement. Even as he slows, the lefty uses his change of pace, good reads and hesitations to constantly look for opportunity off of curl plays, and is in constant motion, while also able to post up, push the ball, drive and kick, and work the ball around off of his own gravity.
Garcia is always busy on the court. And that is why he is always employed.
Brazil’s Best
Aside from his two attempts in the NBA and a brief sojourn into the EuroLeague with Israeli powerhouse Maccabi Tel-Aviv, Garcia has mainly plied his trade all these years in his homeland. With all due respect, the standard of Brazil’s domestic leagues is not the highest.
Nevertheless, Garcia is no bit-part player. Last season, playing for Bauru (with whom he has spent all but one of the past eleven seasons), he averaged 13.3 points, 5.4 assists, 4.7 rebounds and 1.3 steals per game, with the assists ranking sixth in the league. Bauru made it to the NBB semi-finals, and they did so off the back of their 45-year-old leader who, were he anyone else, would be at least seven seasons into a commentary gig by now. And this does not even begin to describe Garcia’s years of work for his national team.
In the twenty years since Garcia’s time in New Orleans, basketball in the city has changed beyond all recognition. Hurricane Katrina, the relocation of the team, the forced sale and temporary NBA ownership, financial problems, the Chris Paul era, the Anthony Davis era, the false hope of the Zion era. So much has happened; so much upheaval has been suffered through. And yet a few thousand miles away, a former New Orleans guard has been the model of consistency the entire time.
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