Premier big men June Mar Fajardo and Christian Standhardinger may have been lording it over, but CJ Perez had shown flashes of brilliance, boosting his chances to emerge as Best Player of the Conference in the Commissioner’s Cup of the Philippine Basketball Association.
Perez, a two-time scoring champion for San Miguel Beer, has been averaging 16.8 points per game, but he stepped on the gas in Game 1 of their best-of-five semifinal series in which they beat Barangay Ginebra in thrilling fashion, 92-90.
The cat-quick guard from Lyceum of the Philippines University pumped in 26 points to give the Beermen a 1-0 edge in the Final Four of the season-opening conference.
Right now, Standhardinger is leading the statistical derby with 38.5 statistical points after leading the Kings to an 8-4 win-loss card in the eliminations.
NorthPort forward Arvin Tolentino, the top scorer of the eliminations, is behind with 35.1 SPs after posting 22.4 points per game average while Perez is third with 34.7 SPs and Calvin Oftana of TNT Tropang Giga is at fourth with 34.1 SPs.
Rounding out the top five is Standhardinger’s teammate, Scottie Thompson, who piled up 32.1 SPs.
Fajardo, however, didn’t make the top 25 in the BPC derby after missing most of San Miguel’s elimination round matches due to a fractured left ring finger.
But his return is a major boost to the Beermen as they can now match up with the Kings, who are being powered by the towering combo of Standhardinger and Japeth Aguilar.
With the Batang Pier already out, the race to the BPC will now boil down to Standhardinger and Perez, whose explosive Game 1 performance serves as a strong warning to the rest of the field.
A member of the gold medal-winning teams of Gilas Pilipinas in the 32nd Southeast Asian Games and the 19th Asian Games, Perez has never won a BPC as he spent the first two seasons of his career with the Terrafirma franchise.
Now playing his third season with the Beermen, he’s much more comfortable becoming one of the top guns despite competing for minutes with the likes of Marcio Lassiter, Jericho Cruz, Don Trollano and Terrence Romeo, who is also a two-time scoring champion.
But Perez is willing to do whatever it takes to help the Beermen, especially now that they are playing with chips on their shoulders as they try to get back against the team which swept them in the playoffs of last season.
“We’re coming out prepared,” Perez said.
“We really looked forward to this. Now that we’ve taken Game 1, we feel we have a better chance of returning to the finals.”
