It's the news that all Hawks fans want to hear. Not only is Tyler Harvey sticking around, he wants to lead this team to championship glory.
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The guard enjoyed his first season in the Illawarra, recommitting to the club on a three-year deal last week. Harvey helped take the Hawks back to the NBL playoffs in 2021, but the 27-year-old is keen to taste more success.
"I'm very excited to be coming back to such a great city. Wollongong felt like home and I was eager to come back home, basically," Harvey said.
"I feel great. With a three-year deal locked in, I want to bring a championship to Wollongong and that's my goal. I don't sign to just play games, I want to win. I want to change the narrative around the team and I feel like in three years, you can make a lot of noise and you can change that."
The Californian native averaged 20 points and three assists a game in his maiden NBL campaign, on his way to being named the league's MVP runner-up.
Harvey's re-signing was followed by teammates Isaac White and Lachie Dent inking new deals. The trio will join Sam Froling, Emmett Naar, Akoldah Gak, Dan Grida and Max Darling on the Illawarra Hawks roster for 2021-22, while the club remains in discussion with Justin Simon and are understood to have reached an in-principle agreement with Boomer Duop Reath.
It's great signs for the Hawks, with club president and co-owner Dorry Kordahi last week telling the Mercury that re-signing Harvey was a crucial step in the process.
"Having Tyler come back on a three-year deal, you can't hide the fact he's going to be our centrepiece and we're building our club around him," Kordahi said.
"We wouldn't have invested three years into Tyler if we didn't believe in that. For us, if you perform great on the court and don't have the values off the court of buying into the community, that's something that's harder to invest long-term in. He's shown all those key qualities.
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Joshua Bartlett
A sporting fanatic who is keen to promote all codes in the Illawarra and abroad. Mercury's chief football reporter.
A sporting fanatic who is keen to promote all codes in the Illawarra and abroad. Mercury's chief football reporter.
