Barangay Ginebra behemoth Greg Slaughter and Meralco forward Chris Newsome will have their exciting side battle in the PBA Governors Cup Finals, both pushing their drive for the Best Player of the Conference award.
Through the semi-final round, Slaughter and Newsome were among the Top Five players in the stats race along with San Miguel Beer's June Mar Fajardo and Arwind Santos and TNT KaTropa main man Jayson Castro.
But the race is virtually down between Slaughter and Newsome with Fajardo, Santos and Castro unable to bring their teams to the title playoff.
Fajardo topped the stats race with an average of 38.455 a game, followed by Castro (33.563), Slaughter (32.625), Newsome (30.875) and Santos (30.583).
Narrowly missing the Top Five was another Ginebra player in LA Tenorio (30.188).
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GlobalPort's Stanley Pringle was at No. 6 with 29.444, followed by Alaska Milk's Calvin Abueva (29.000), Meralco's Baser Amer (28.867) and SMB's Alex Cabagnot (28.5) to round out the Top 10.
Meanwhile, Allen Durham of Meralco is the runaway leader in the Best Import race with 58.875 points a game.
Winner of the Best Import award last year, Durham led the Bolts to playoff top seeding then carried the team to a three-game sweep of the Star Hotshots in the semifinals with his eye-popping averages of 25.4 points, 20.06 rebounds and 6.8 assists.
He leads the league both in rebounds and in assists.
Ginebra's Justin Brownlee was at sixth with an average of 48.875 through the semis.
Brandon Brown of Phoenix was at No. 2 (54.5), followed by Henry Walker of Blackwater (54.1), Murphey Holloway of GlobalPort (53.2) then NLEX's Aaron Fuller (49.5).
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Durham seems to have the lock on the award.
Ginebra coach Tim Cone and Brownlee are one in their description of the Meralco reinforcement.
"Their import is a beast. We don't have a matchup for him. We'll figure out," said Cone.
"He's a beast. He's unstoppable. He gives teams lot of problems that's why he's the best import. I'll just do my best try to contain him and try to slow him down," said Brownlee.
