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Years ago
McDonald, 41, signed for two more years
Story reported in the age
www.theage.com.au/news
THE Melbourne Tigers, according to owner Seamus McPeake, are taking it two years at a time with their championship point guard Darryl McDonald.
The club has signed McDonald, who turns 42 in June, for two more seasons, agreeing to his request to upgrade the one-year option it had on him.
And, said McPeake, if McDonald performed over the next two seasons like he did in leading the Tigers to the title this season, the club would sign him for two more after that.
"Age is just a number. It's performance on court that counts," McPeake said. "The only reason he had one (year) and an option was because of the minutes he played under Lindsay (Gaze, the Tigers' previous coach) we were unsure how long he was capable of playing for."
McDonald, after an easy first two seasons with the Tigers, 2003-2004 and 2004-2005, when he played a support role to Andrew Gaze and Lanard Copeland, stepped back into the starting position for this season under new coach Al Westover and re-established himself as the National Basketball League's best point guard, making light of his 41 years.
He played well enough to join co-captain Chris Anstey in the NBL's first team to be announced at the awards dinner in Sydney tonight, but is likely to be in the second team with another teammate, Dave Thomas.
McDonald is not looking past the new term. "I think these two might be it," he said yesterday. "I want to play, but only at full strength, so I think I'll leave it at that."
Under the new deal, McDonald will become a year-round Tiger employee, coaching the club's Big V team in the off-season. "It's definitely something I want to do," McDonald said of a coaching career.
