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Bobby Ray Parks, Jr. had a monstrous season inside the PBA bubble.
Despite missing the last four games of the 2020 PBA Philippine Cup Finals, the 6-foot-4 shooting guard scored 22.4 points, 7.8 rebounds and 3.1 assists per game. He was definitely the pound-for-pound stat leader of the season.
However, the second generation did not win the Best Conference Player award, nor was it part of the Elite Five.
How did that happen? Well, unlike most leagues in the country, the PBA award system is different.
Statistics are only part of the equation, as official votes from the media, players and the league also carry weight.
Statistical points make up most of the criteria at 40 percent. Votes for the PBA Press Corps are set at 30 percent, followed by 25 percent from players and five percent from the league office.
For the All-PBA bubble team, which had a two-guard assignment, Parks wasn’t even in the top three.
Geneva’s Stanley Pringle and Phoenix’s Matthew Wright were above the competition on the count, while Parks’ teammate Pogoy was a distant third.
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PBA SEASON 45 ELITE FIVE |
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| COURT | |||||
| NAME | STATISTICS | MEDIA | PLAYERS | PBA | TOTAL |
| PRINGLE, Stanley | 225 | 361 | 39 | 100 | 725 |
| WRIGHT, Mateo | 230 | 462 | 2. 3 | 715 | |
| POGOY, Roger | 230 | 9 | 100 | 339 | |
With the award for Best Player of the Conference, it was down to Pringle against Wright in what was the closest race since 1994, according to league statistician Fidel Mangonon.
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PBA SEASON 45 BEST PLAYER OF THE CONFERENCE |
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| NAME | STATISTICS | MEDIA | PLAYERS | PBA | TOTAL |
| PRINGLE, Stanley | 641 | 632 | 67 | 300 | 1,640 |
| WRIGHT, Mateo | 657 | 868 | 53 | 1,578 | |
| POGOY, Roger | 657 | 141 | 10 | 150 | 958 |
| PARKS, Bobby Ray | 704 | 118 | 4 | fifty | 876 |
| ABUE, Calvin | 684 | 59 | 36 | 779 | |
| PEREZ, CJ | 658 | 10 | 668 | ||
Despite being the leader in stats, scoring 704 points, Parks only received 118 votes from the media, 50 (third-place vote) from the PBA, and just four votes from his peers.
Wright had the approval of the media with 868 points and was second among his teammates with 53. However, the Fil-Canadian was not in the top three of the PBA, resulting in his 657 points in the career statistics were voided by eventual winner Pringle.
Pringle had a full 300 points in the PBA, led among players with 67 and second in the PBA Press Corps with 632. It was enough to catapult his 641 stat points to the top and the BPC trophy.
There is a saying that statistics don’t lie, but in professional leagues, they sometimes do.
