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The PBA will not award a Most Valuable Player award at the end of the 2020 season.
Commissioner Willie Marcial said Thursday that the league’s Board of Governors will name the Best Player in the Conference once the Philippines Cup concludes in the next week or two.
“The MVP is a one-year award. It’s three conferences. We only held one conference this year. The board believes that it would be a disadvantage for former MVPs who played a full season before winning the award,” he said in Filipino.
This means that June Mar Fajardo of San Miguel, who missed the entire season to rehab her right shin injury, will maintain a record streak of six consecutive MVPs.
“We also don’t want an asterisk next to the award because of the bubble,” Marcial added.
The league will also honor an outstanding rookie and an outstanding first team. The only regular trophies to be distributed are Samboy Lim’s Most Improved Player and Sportsmanship Awards.
Regarding the opening of the 2021 season, Marcial said that the league has a start date in April. No decision has yet been made on whether next year’s games will take place inside another bubble.
“I asked to wait until February so that we can study what kind of bubble will be used and evaluate what the economy will be like at that time and whether or not there will be a vaccine at that time,” he said. “There is a lot to take into account for the season opener. So by February or March, something will become clear.”
The 2020 Rookie Draft, which Marcial had previously said will be called the Season 45 Draft, will take place in March. Applications will open on Monday for local and fil-foreign players, and the deadline for registrations will be the last week of January.
Marcial said another special Gilas draft has yet to be decided.
“We will meet with the SBP (Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas) and the Board about the wording to see if it will be like last year. We will meet around February for that,” he explained.
In other matters, the PBA is targeting a January or February opener for the 3×3 league.
The league will also soon address the launch made by the East Asian Super League (EASL) by having PBA teams join their home and away league next year.
“They did a presentation earlier, but the board will still have to talk about it. (EASL CEO) Matt Beyer and (CFO) Henry Kerins were there,” Marcial said.
A home and away league format will run for five months, with PBA champion and runner-up teams China, Japan and South Korea making up the eight teams for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons.
The eight squads will be divided into two groups. Each team will play six home and away matches from October 2021 to January 2022, with the top two teams in each group advancing to the Final Four in Macau in February 2022.
