Photo by Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.NET
In an age where few thought that four Most Valuable Player awards would be improbable to be won by one man in the PBA, June Mar Fajardo needed just five seasons to equal what two all-time greats before him did in their careers.
And this season is treading the same path that the last four had taken, with the San Miguel Beer center looking well on the way to extending a record that may never be broken in his lifetime.
Those four MVPs were won in a streak—Alvin Patrimonio and Ramon Fernandez won theirs in 35 seasons combined—and winning a fifth and extending this string could definitely make it unreachable for anyone else who will enter the league.
Fajardo, after all, is a once-in-a-lifetime find.
“I never imagined that I will get this far,” the 6-foot-10 Cebu native said in Filipino after winning a record sixth Best Player of the Conference (BPC) accolade in the just-concluded Philippine Cup won by San Miguel Beer for an unprecedented fourth straight year.
“I didn’t even like playing basketball growing up.”
Those four MVPs had a pattern: Fajardo winning the Philippine Cup BPC and the Beermen claiming the conference.
“I played basketball just to earn a college scholarship,” Fajardo said.
All of San Miguel’s last six championships have a heavy Fajardo imprint, especially this latest all-Filipino triumph.
He scored 42 points and grabbed 20 rebounds in what could possibly go down as the finest individual performance by a local in a title-clinching game.
“He really didn’t want to lose. You all saw it the way he played,” coach Leo Austria said of Fajardo, who scored 14 points in the fourth quarter and eight in the second overtime as the Beermen completed a rally from 23 points down.
With his four MVPs, six BPCs and two Finals MVPs, Fajardo is certainly in the conversation as the best center of all-time in the PBA.
But how about the best player ever, especially if the trend holds and he wins that fifth straight MVP?
There are certainly a lot of things on the line this season for the soft-spoken giant, though he will never admit it.
“I don’t care if I win the MVP again. I’m not even thinking about it,” he said.
“I’ve been saying this all along: I want more championships, because everyone in the team is happy when we win championships,” Fajardo concluded. “And I love it when everyone is happy.