After making history last night, Barangay Ginebra head coach Tim Cone expressed his respect for Mark Caguioa.

The 40-year-old shooting guard’s faithfulness got recognized last night as he became the player with the longest tenure with one team, reaching his 18^th season in the league, surpassing the legendary Alvin Patrimonio and Talk ‘n Text leader Harvey Carey, who are both tied for second with 17.

Caguioa only played six and a half minutes last night but gave everyone joy as he scored two points and had two rebounds in the game, as his Kings squad took down Meralco in a dominant fashion, 105-91.

In the 18 years that MC47 has played, he has done so much in his career. He’s a former Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the league and he’s also an eight-time PBA champion and a 13-time All-Star as well.

But the biggest achievement of Caguioa, possibly, is winning the respect, love and admiration of the fans of the most famous team in the PBA, as he was accepted as the new face of the Barangay Ginebra after the era of the great Robert Jaworski.

During the postgame press conference, Cone went on record to give his respect to the legend.

“I don’t think I’ve been around with a player that has so much joy with just being around. Marc is just a joy to be around, he’s always up, he never insults, he never gets upset,” he said.

“He just has that kind of personality, his teammates love him, he never demands anything. With his history and who he is, he could really demand but he doesn’t he’s just a really good guy,” he added.

Those words meant a lot given the history that Cone has. Considered as the Greatest Coach in PBA history, Cone was able to handle the likes of Johnny Abarrientos, Jojo Lastimosa, Kenneth Duremdes, Marc Pringis, James Yap, PJ Simon to name a few.

“It’s great to see him, it’s great to have him on the team. Real strong leadership for our team and he can still fill it up, he’s still a little bit out of shape too, he needs to get his weight down a little bit like Joe (Devance) but he could still fill it up and you can see it in practice, Just having him around is such an awesome thing, he just enjoy being here and being part of the team and leading the young guys,” he stated.

Caguioa and Cone has had a lot of battles through the years and now the two greatest in their field are now working under the same flag.

Caguioa, who was the third overall pick of the 2001 PBA draft, is 15^th in the all-time scoring list with 10,073.

He’ll have a chance to add up to that total points as he and the Barangay Ginebra will be back in action this Wednesday at 6:45 p.m. Against the Phoenix Fuel Masters.