June Mar Fajardo wins 9th BPC award

June Mar Fajardo is the king of the PBA Philippine Cup. PBA Images

By Ivan Saldajeno

MANILA—June Mar Fajardo is officially back!

The San Miguel center, who has been riddled by injuries the previous years, won the PBA Philippine Cup Best Player of the Conference, a testament that he is 100 percent back in action.

Fajardo clinched the season-opening conference's top individual prize in style, leading in all the sectors where he can earn BPC points, eventually amassing a total of 1,119 points.

Fajardo, who received the award prior to Game 4 of the finals at the Smart Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City, led the statistical points race up to the semifinals as revealed last week, but he too won by a landslide in the media votes, earning all but two first place votes and finished with 537 points.

He also finished first in the player votes, although he was tied with TNT's Mikey Williams with 81 points.

Williams actually had more first place votes than Fajardo, but upon calculating the points they earned through the player votes, they ended up tied.

Williams eventually finished third in the BPC race with 630 points after getting a huge bunch of the third place votes among the PBA beat reporters as well as being the top vote-getter among the players.

Fajardo's fellow Beerman CJ Perez finished second with 776 points, while the Ginebra duo of Scottie Thompson and Japeth Aguilar were fourth and fifth with 468 and 415 points, respectively.

For the first time, the PBA Commissioner's Office will not have a say on who will win the BPC, and according to Commissioner Willie Marcial, it will be the same in the other individual awards like the Best Import and all the awards at stake in the Leo Awards.

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