Helterbrand, Alexander of Ginebra PBA's best

MANILA, Philippines – Jay-Jay Helterbrand beat Ginebra teammate Mark Caguioa for the Best Player of the Conference (BPC) honors, while Chris Alexander became the fifth Kings’ reinforcement to win the Best Import award in the Smart-Philippine Basketball Association Fiesta Conference. The awards ceremony will be held before the start of Game 2 between the Barangay Ginebra Kings and Air21 Express Sunday at the Ynares Center in Antipolo City. Helterbrand, who began his basketball career in the country by playing only one game with the Batangas Blades in the now defunct Metropolitan Basketball Association before moving to the PBA as a free agent with Ginebra in 2000, tallied 1,403 points after topping the media, players, TV, and PBA (Commissioner’s Office) votes. The other half of the Gin Kings’ “Fast and the Furious" tandem only lost in the statistical part of the process, 311 to 309, one of the closest in years. In the final tally, though, Helterbrand ran away with the award by 520 points over the high-scoring Caguioa, who wound up with a total of 883 votes. Helterbrand got 409 votes from the media, 235 from the players, 300 from the TV and 150 from the PBA. Kelly Williams, the Best Player of the Conference in the Philippine Cup, ended third in the voting with 471 while Air21’s Arwind Santos finishing fourth with 427. Reigning MVP Willie Miller of Alaska came in fifth after tallying 398 points. Although this is the sixth individual award Helterbrand has acquired in his PBA career, this will simply rank as perhaps one of the best and sweetest. He won the Finals Most Valuable Player award when Ginebra conquered the 2006-07 Philippine Cup over sister-team San Miguel and also has two All-Stars MVP honors, the first one coming in the 2004-05 Laoag Games and then in the 2006-07 All-Stars in Baguio City where he shared the title with Miller. Helterbrand also was adjudged in 2004 as the Comeback Player of the Year and in the previous season, was chosen Mr. Quality Minutes. As a national player, he was named MVP when the Philippines competed and triumphed in the Sultan Cup in Brunei in 2005. Helterbrand thus became the fourth Ginebra player to win the BPC. The players who won before him were Marlou Aquino, Caguioa and Eric Menk, who took the BPC title three times. Alexander, for his part, totaled 1,413 votes, beating the Express’ Steven Thomas, who ended up with 988 points. Alexander topped the statistics (409-387), media (420-206), TV (300-150), and PBA (150-75) over Thomas. The only voting portion he lost to Thomas was in the players, who went for the Air21 import, 169-133. Adam Parada of Red Bull was third in the voting with 645 and Amal McCaskill fourth (497). Alexander, the notorious shot blocker and key figure in Ginebra’s franchise-best 13-game winning run as of posting time, thus became the fifth Gin King to win the award after Michael Hacket in 1985, Jamie Walker in 1988, Carlos Briggs in 1989 and Wes Matthews in 1991. Since Alexander’s arrival to replace Ernest Brown, Ginebra has registered a 17-3 (win-loss) record. He has collected double-doubles in each of his 20 games, averaging 20.8 rebounds and 19.2 points. He is the No. 1 import in rebounding, in shot blocks (3.2), in field goal percentage (58.2) and is the player with the highest average in minutes played (41.9). – GMANews.TV