Alex Garcia has been playing professional basketball since the last millennium, and by the look of his latest contract, he isn't stopping any time soon. The Brazilian guard, whom Israeli fans will remember from a single, near-miss season at Maccabi Tel Aviv, has extended his deal with Bauru Basket in a move that will keep him on an NBB court until at least age 47, Sport5 reported.
Garcia, born in March 1980 and now 46, is already one of the most durable stories in Brazilian basketball, and Bauru's own announcement leaned into the joke. According to Sport5, the club's statement declared that "LeBron James even tried to overshadow us, but the news of the day came first" — needling the NBA's own ageless superstar as Bauru pitched its captain as basketball's real iron man.
It is the latest in a string of renewals Garcia has signed with the São Paulo state club since rejoining in 2014, with a brief detour to Minas along the way. Under the new terms he enters his 12th season in Bauru colors, still logging real minutes: last season he averaged 12.8 points, 5.4 assists and 4.1 rebounds a game, hardly the output of a player closing in on 50.
Bauru has taken to calling him simply the "GOAT," and the label is not just marketing puff. Garcia is an NBB champion with the club from 2016-17, has collected South American League and FIBA Americas League silverware, and remains the face of a franchise he has represented for the better part of a decade.
For Israeli fans, though, Garcia's name carries a different, more bittersweet memory. He spent the 2007-08 season at Maccabi Tel Aviv, arriving as a battle-tested guard with NBA experience on his résumé, and closed out the EuroLeague campaign averaging 5.0 points and 1.4 assists across 23 appearances.
It was a campaign of near-misses. Maccabi lost the Israeli League final 73-72 to Hapoel Holon, fell in the Israeli State Cup final, and were beaten by CSKA Moscow at the 2008 EuroLeague Final Four in Madrid — three finals, three defeats, and not a single trophy for a squad that had been expected to challenge on every front.
Garcia moved on after that lone Tel Aviv season, but his career had already survived worse. He played in the NBA with the San Antonio Spurs in 2003-04 and then the New Orleans Hornets, where a torn anterior cruciate ligament suffered against the Washington Wizards in December 2004 threatened to end things altogether. Instead he rebuilt his career overseas and back home in Brazil, and more than two decades later he is still playing at a level that keeps drawing new contracts.
Bauru's decision to extend him through what would be his age-47 season underlines just how far Garcia has outlasted almost every peer from his generation of Brazilian basketball — and how a guard who once shared a EuroLeague court in Tel Aviv is now, at least for a day, sharing headlines with LeBron James.
