Best individual performers Slaughter, Durham want nothing more than championship

GREG SLAUGHTER and Allen Durham took different paths before copping the best individual awards this conference.

The seven- foot Barangay Ginebra slotman was on a comeback trail when the Governors’ Cup started after being sidelined for nearly a year by a knee injury. At the latter stretch of the conference, he was awarded the Best Player of the Conference ( BPC), a fitting tribute to his dedication to get back on track and help his team in its ultimate goal of winning the championship.

Mr. Slaughter is trying to send a message to those players , particularly those who are coming off from injuries.

“I just hope it inspires people who suffered major injuries. When I got the injury, it was kinda disappointing. Hope it just shows you can always come back stronger from the setback,” said Mr. Slaughter.

Mr. Slaughter won his first BPC award over the other bidders that include Chris Newsome of Meralco and long-time rival June Mar Fajardo of San Miguel Beer.

Mr. Fajardo actually led the statistical race with 463 points, but Mr. Slaughter, who placed second in the stats with 393 points, got 412 media votes, to clinch the award.

But winning the BPC is not Mr. Slaughter’s main objective.

“Individual award or not, we want to win the championship. That’s been our goal this conference,” he added.

It is the same objective of Mr. Durham, who wound up winning the Best Import in back-to-back fashion.

Durham won the award over Justin Brownlee of Barangay Ginebra and Glen Rice, Jr., of Talk ’N Text.

In winning the award for the second straight season, Durham is still feeling empty, especially seeing his team losing the first two games of the best-of-seven championship series.

“It happened, I won back-toback and that’s about it,” said Mr. Durham.

For Mr. Durham, the losses had definitely overshadowed the feat he accomplished. His team came close to winning Game 2 and tying the series at 1-1 apiece, but the Gin Kings went on a rampaging 19-3 run in coming away with the victory and moving halfway from getting the job done of repeating as champions.

Mr. Durham knows he has to lead his team to fight back and feels confident about their chances.

“It’s quite a little bit of everything. We played that good for 44 minutes and we come out with a loss, that’s kinda hard to take. We’ve got to move forward. The good thing is we’re not deep in the hole, we can still come back. But we’ve got to win on Wednesday,” he added. —