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| CJ Perez was joined by his San Miguel teammates after winning the BPC award. Kennelf Monteza |
QUEZON CITY—CJ Perez was the runaway winner of the Best Player of the Conference for the PBA Commissioner's Cup.
However, in a stunning turn of events, Johnathan Williams was chosen as the Best Import of the season-opening tournament.
Perez topped the voting among the media and the players, which catapulted him to his first BPC award.
The San Miguel winger got all but one of the first-place votes from the media for 505 points and 18 out of 28 first-place votes from the players for 86 points and finished with a total of 1,055 points, way ahead of runner-up Christian Standhardinger.
The Ginebra big man, who was number one in the statistical points up to the semifinals, finished second with 777 points.
NorthPort Batang Pier's Arvin Tolentino was third with 559 points, TNT Tropang Giga's Calvin Oftana was fourth with 472, and Gin King Scottie Thompson finished fifth with 446.
On the other hand, Williams got the better of conference finalists Tyler Bey of Magnolia and Bennie Boatwright of San Miguel in a tight Best Import race.
The media votes turned out to be the deciding factor as the Phoenix center got 30 first-place votes for 424 points.
Williams was second in the stats race and only finished third in the player votes without any first-place vote but he topped the race with 1,017 points.
Williams became the first import since Meralco's Arinze Onuaku in the 2016 Commissioner's Cup to win Best Import honors even if his team did not make the finals.
The Fuel Masters making the semifinals behind his all-around game turned out to be enough of a narrative to sway the votes toward his favor.
Bey, who topped the player votes, was second with 908 points, while Boatwright, who was number one in the stats race and number two in the player votes, was third with 878.
Ginebra's Tony Bishop was fourth with 506.
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