He learned to play on sandlots and wasn’t on any college recruiter’s radar, but somehow CJ Perez is now one of the best players on the PBA’s most storied franchise.
On April 9, 2025, the day the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) commemorated its 50th anniversary, the league’s only remaining pioneer team, the San Miguel Beermen, was featured in a throwback game against the Meralco Bolts.
The PBA went through great pains to capture a throwback atmosphere, from the circa 1982 jerseys of the Beermen to the acetate TV graphics to recalling a courtside reporter from over three decades ago.
But while the aesthetics were a blast from the past, the game itself was firmly rooted in the present, with the Beermen picking up another win in the Season 49 Philippine Cup. And leading the charge was the player many have installed as the face of the San Miguel franchise once eight-time MVP June Mar Fajardo retires.
CJ Perez was his usual unstoppable self, dropping 29 points on the Bolts on a variety of offensive moves. He is quite possibly the best guard in the league right now, and still trending upwards. It’s a scary thought for the competition and a huge reassurance for the Beermen.
Perez has as complete a PBA résumé as you can get. Top overall draft pick. Rookie of the Year. Two-time champion. One-time Best Player of the Conference. Three-time Mythical First Team. One-time All-Defensive Team. One-time Finals MVP. Three-time scoring champion. And he’s only in his sixth season.
The one thing missing from his trophy case, of course, is an MVP award. He came close last season, finishing runner-up to Fajardo, who has all but made the MVP race his personal playground. But if there’s one player who has a chance of breaking the Kraken’s stranglehold on the award, it’s CJ Perez.
The MVP seems like an inevitability. Yet if you ask him, he’d rather add to his championship collection for now.
“I think MVP is…darating, siyempre,” he told The GAME in an exclusive interview. “It’s up to me kung paano ko kukunin, or paano ko paghahandaan, at paano ko gagalingan sa game. Pero it’s all about winning that championship, kasi if manalo man ako ng MVP, pero hindi namin makuha yung championship, parang it’s not worth it, eh.
“Pero I think sa akin naman, hindi ko masyadong tina-target yun. Inaano ko lang is maging consistent ako sa game ko, and makatulong sa team para makukuha ng championship. I think sa akin naman, mas counted yun.”
Anyone who’s watched Perez play over the last 10 years wouldn’t be surprised hearing him talk about being MVP and winning championships. He’s that good. But if you could roll back the clock an additional 10 or 15 years and take a glimpse of what life was like for CJ Perez then, there was no way you would think that you were looking at a future PBA superstar.
Provincial life
The story of CJ Perez is one of triumph over adversity, for the odds were stacked against him from the start. It begins with the all-too-familiar tale of a probinsiyana going abroad to provide for her family. His mother was an OFW in Hong Kong, where she gave birth to a baby boy in late 1993 whom she named Christian Jaymar.
Perez never knew his father, and prefers to keep it that way. Working as a single parent in a foreign land is always difficult, so when CJ was two years old, his mother made the difficult decision to have him raised by his grandparents in her hometown of Bautista, Pangasinan.
His grandparents raised him well, but money was scarce.
“Mahirap,” CJ said. “Mahirap lumaki sa probinsiya. Lalo na pag wala naman kami masyadong kaya. Nag-aantay lang kami ng padala ng mama ko.”
Bautista is mostly farmland, the typical provincial town where everybody knows everybody, and, in the 1990s, everybody gathered around their radios to listen to PBA games. It was CJ’s first introduction to the country’s national pastime.
“Actually, hindi kami din masyadong nakakanood ng NBA, ng PBA. Pero growing up, laging nakikinig yung lolo ko sa radyo.”
It’s not too difficult to guess which team CJ’s grandfather rooted for.
“Ginebra talaga siya,” he said with a smile. “Since nung bata pa ako, laging Ginebra. Hanggang ngayon, yung mga tito ko naman yung Ginebra ngayon. Kasi, si Lolo passed away na bago ako mag-tryout dito sa Manila.”
CJ’s own Ginebra fandom solidified when his family switched from radio to television and he saw for himself the exploits of Mark Caguioa and Jayjay Helterbrand. Eventually, he began playing in the sandlots of Bautista, on open courts under the hot sun. Take a long drive in either direction from Manila, and it’s a scene that you’ll no doubt encounter in every town you pass through.
“Nagsimula ako nung grade school,” he recalls. “Naglalaro na ako with friends. Sa mga tambay-tambay lang sa streets. Minsan, nagka-cut class for basketball. So, parang I’m just doing basketball para mag-enjoy lang. Laro-laro lang talaga siya before. Walang bubong. Minsan, buhangin.”
By basketball standards, CJ Perez was a late bloomer. Unlike his counterparts in the big city, he never had an opportunity to enroll at an early age in a basketball camp. He only began playing organized ball in his last year in high school, when he joined the varsity team.
After high school, college scouts weren’t exactly knocking on their door, so he enrolled in Panpacific University North Philippines in Urdaneta, where he played for two uneventful years. It was one of his teammates at PUNP who first gave him the idea to explore playing opportunities in Manila.
“May teammate ako dati sa Pangasinan na nag-tryout din siya sa Basté (San Sebastian College) before,” CJ explained. “And then, may tito siya. Naging guardian ko siya dito sa Manila.”
Big city boy
His teammate’s uncle arranged for CJ to attend tryouts of different schools in the U-Belt area. He tried his luck in Adamson, CEU, Mapua and finally San Sebastian.
It was at Basté, though, where CJ ultimately landed. It helped that his friend’s uncle personally knew coaches Turo Valenzona and Topex Robinson.
The Stags were just fresh off an NCAA championship when CJ joined them, and they were loaded. Since he was a transferee, Perez had to sit out a year of residency. During this time, he and other Team B members would scrimmage against Team A, which was led by that troika known as the Pinatubo Trio.
“Na-shock ako at first,” he admits. “Nanibago kasi mas talented yung mga dito sa Manila. Yung talent ng mga dito sa Manila, kakaiba.
“Sila Calvin (Abueva), Ronald Pascual, Ian Sangalang. Yun yung mga nakaka-tune up namin. Practice game kami. Doon na-shock ako eh. Lalo na kay Ronald Pascual, sobrang athletic, sobrang kumpletong player talaga. May shooting.”
CJ Perez played two seasons for the Stags, during which time he faced off against future PBA opponents like San Beda’s Baser Amer and Perpetual Help’s Scottie Thompson. He was eventually recruited by the Ateneo Blue Eagles, and he stayed in Loyola for two years but never got to play in the UAAP.
Still, his brief time under Tab Baldwin gave him valuable lessons.
“Sa conditioning pa lang. Sobrang conditioning. Actually, yung mga training niya before, parang nasa army yung dating. Parang sundalo. Kasi, may mga off-season kami na training sa mga malalayong lugar.”
Perez is candid enough to admit that he couldn’t keep in step with Ateneo’s academic requirements. By 2016, he was looking for a new school, and as luck would have it, his old coach at San Sebastian, Topex Robinson, was now head coach at Lyceum.
“So, after na-kick out ako ng Ateneo, siya una kong tinawagan. Sabi ko, ‘I really need your help. Diyan na lang ako maglaro sa’yo kaysa sa ibang team.’ So, naglaro ako sa kanya for two years sa Lyceum.”
In his first season with Lyceum, Perez was named MVP and led the Pirates to a perfect 18-0 elimination round record and an automatic finals slot. However, they were swept by the San Beda Red Lions in the best-of-three championship series.
In his second season, Perez again led the Pirates to the finals against San Beda. But he had to sit out the first game because of an arcane rule that required NCAA players to notify the league’s Management Committee if they were applying for the PBA draft.
Perez had indeed applied without notifying the ManCom, prompting a Game 1 suspension. It’s the one “what if” moment of his basketball career.
“I think it’s a different ballgame, eh, kung nakapaglaro ako nung Game 1,” he says. “Siyempre, yung kumpiyansa namin andun pa rin. Yung mga teammates ko, ako yung isa nilang inaasahan, eh. Pero, yun nga, pagdating nung Game 2, parang wala nang kumpiyansa yung mga kasama ko from Game 1, kasi sobrang laki nung tambak.”
Still, he had done more than enough at Lyceum to merit being picked no. 1 overall in the 2018 PBA draft by the Columbian Dyip. His first PBA season was marked by few wins on the court, but individually, Perez quickly showed his class.
By season’s end, he was named Rookie of the Year, but undoubtedly the highlight of his rookie season came when Yeng Guiao named him to the Gilas Pilipinas squad that would compete in the 2019 FIBA World Cup. Playing against NBA players was an experience that forever changed his mindset.
“Yung kumpiyansa ko sobrang tumaas noon after that World Cup,” he said. “Sobrang, parang feeling ko, pag-uwi ko dito, feeling ko ako yung pinakamagaling. Ganun yung feeling nung kumpiyansa na naibigay ni Coach Yeng doon sa World Cup na yun.”
Perez went on to play two seasons for the Dyip. Then in early 2021, he was traded to basketball royalty.
Part of a winning tradition
With 29 championships, the San Miguel Beermen are the winningest and most storied franchise in the PBA. They are the only remaining franchise among the league’s nine pioneer teams from 1975. Barangay Ginebra may have the widest fanbase, but the Beermen are the most decorated team in PBA history.
“The New York Yankees of the PBA,” is how one foreign writer described them to his colleagues in the United States. Seventeen of the PBA’s 50 greatest players once wore some version of the franchise’s many jerseys (the team has also carried the brands Royal Tru-Orange, Gold Eagle, Magnolia, and Petron). Six were named MVP while playing for the franchise.
The list of SMB stars who have become household names through generations of fans is almost as long as the franchise’s championships. Martirez. Paner. Samboy. El Presidente. Asaytono. The two Dannys. Olsen. Arwind. Marcio. June Mar.
To wear the San Miguel jersey is to carry a winning tradition on your back, with the expectation that you will live up to it. CJ Perez is fully aware of this, and fully embraces it. He, too, wants to be mentioned in the same breath as the aforementioned names.
“I think, wearing a San Miguel uniform, it’s an honor na mapasama sa winning team,” he says. “Parang, before, napapanood ko lang yung San Miguel, sila Danny I. Pero, ngayon, biglang dumating yung opportunity na mapasama ako sa San Miguel.”
Perez is now in his fourth season with the Beermen. So far in his San Miguel tenure, he’s won two championships, been named Finals MVP once, and been named to the Mythical First Team twice.
Those numbers are still a far cry from Fajardo’s list of accomplishments, but at 31 years of age, there’s still plenty of time for him to collect more hardware. And while it is still June Mar’s team until further notice, CJ Perez has quietly taken over as the Beermen’s leading points-per-game scorer for the past three seasons.
SMB has lofty standards befitting an all-time great franchise, and admittedly, the team has fallen short of those standards this season. For CJ Perez, though, times like these are what he lives for. His early childhood in Bautista, Pangasinan, molded him into the fighter he is today. He welcomes the pressure of leading the Beermen back to the promised land.
“Masarap maglaro para sa San Miguel kasi yung pressure nandun,” he says. “Mas madaming challenges na pumupunta sa team, lalo na sa aming mga player.
“Mas madaming opportunity na manalo ng championship. Sa San Miguel, sobrang dami na nilang pinanalunan na championship. I’m grateful and I’m honored na nakapag-contribute ako doon sa ibang championship.”
It’s been quite the journey for CJ Perez. The kid who was just waiting for his mother’s remittance to come through is now earning way more than enough to allow his mom to scale back on her work.
There are still some mountains to climb, though. When the league announces its 60 greatest players in 10 years, CJ wouldn’t mind being on the list.
“I think, depende naman pero siyempre, para mapunta doon, kailangan mas madaming hard work pa yung gagawin,” he said. “Mas madami pang championship. Mas counted yun sa akin yung dumami yung championship sa résumé ko. Pero if MVP is gonna come, sige. Syempre, ga-grab ko yung opportunity kung darating man.
“Madaming championship, mas malaki yung chance na mapasama sa mga 60 Greatest or 70 or 80 siguro. I think, lahat naman yun ang pinapangarap. Lahat naman yun ang gusto.”
He will make it, of course. From the sandlots of Pangasinan to the San Miguel Beermen, CJ Perez has conquered every challenge thrown at him.
Text SID VENTURA
Photography KITKAT PAJARO assisted by ALBERT CALAGUAS
Creative Direction CAS ASEOCHE
Sittings Editor SID VENTURA
Shot on Location GAMEVILLE BALL PARK
Production Coordination ANTHONY MENDOZA