By REYNALD MAGALLON
June Mar Fajardo wore his wide smile as he received and raised another coveted trophy to add to his continuously growing hardware, radiating his usual gentle and easy going demeanor – very far from his beastly and dominant version on the court.
Nothing has changed. Still the humble giant. Same dominant year. And a Most Valuable Player plum. Again.
Fajardo’s lore in the PBA has reached unprecedented heights yet again after winning the 48th Season MVP award — his eighth time bagging the plum to not only extend his record with most such awards in league history but also cementing a feat that could no longer be done again.
Not in another 50 years of PBA. Not even probably in an entire lifetime.
With the award, Fajardo has now doubled the number of MVP awards his closest pursuers had with Ramon Fernandez and Alvin Patrimonio both having four apiece.
He has also won all but one MVP awards available over the last 10 seasons with Scottie Thompson being the other one, not named Fajardo, winning the plum in 2021.
What’s even more impressive was the Cebuano giant is bagging the awards in a runaway fashion.
Just like in the past year’s that he has won, Fajardo won by a mile this year, amassing 2,799 total points from the statistics and votes from the members of the press regularly covering the PBA games.
He bested teammate CJ Perez, who won the Best Player of the Conference and Finals MVP award in the Commissioner’s Cup and Terrafirma’s Christian Standhardinger, who last year, was a vital cog for Barangay Ginebra.
Perez came in second with a total of 1,951 points while Standhardinger had 1,731 points.
By being nominees to the MVP award, the three were also named to the Mythical First team with Meralco duo Chris Newsome and Arvin Tolentino
The Mythical Second team, meanwhile, is composed of Jason Perkins, Calvin Oftana, Stephen Holt, Cliff Hodge and Juami Tiongson.
Fajardo was also named to the all-defensive team joining Newsome and Hodge and NorthPort’s Joshua Munzon and Kemark Carino
Holt, as expected, also ran away with the Rookie of the Year award with points, beating NorthPort’s Cade Flores, Rain or Shine’s Adrian Nocum and Blackwater’s Christian David.
Jhonard Clarito, meanwhile, won the Most Improved Player award while NorthPort’s Paul Zamar was given the Sportsmanship Award.
