CJ Perez has been a star in the PBA the moment he played his first game on January 18, 2019, where he made his debut for Columbian Dyip and scored 26 points in a win. He arrived as a superstar then and there, stepping in immediately as one of the best scorers in the league before eventually leading all scorers twice later on.
Over three years since his debut, Perez ended the 2022 Philippine Cup by helping San Miguel win the championship with a 25-point performance in a do-or-die Game 7 – a culmination of a conference that saw him finish as runner-up in the Best Player of the Conference race, and one that marked his ascension to becoming a near-complete offensive force.
From the time of his debut to their recent Game 7 win, there was one huge change in his game that turned him into possibly the best non-June Mar Fajardo player in the PBA. That change was his transformation into a playmaker that combines passing with scoring – a true primary option in the PBA, one who can act as the team’s engine on offense and lead the charge in creating points for himself and others.
ELITE SCORING, ELITE RIM PRESSURE
It’s no hyperbole to say that Perez is in the top 1% of the PBA in terms of athleticism. At 6-foot-2 with a powerful frame and elite burst, there’s hardly anyone capable of staying in front of him. This is incredibly obvious in transition, where no one in the league scored more than Perez did. He also finished at an incredible 73.4 percent at the rim in those possessions. The speed makes it difficult for backpedaling defenders to keep up, and the vertical explosiveness makes finishing above the rim a piece of cake:
In the halfcourt, it’s more of the same. Only Fajardo made more shots at the rim than Perez, and they each attempted 7.7 shots at the rim per game. San Miguel’s duo pressured the rim harder than any other pair by an incredible margin. Their ability to constantly get looks up close powered the Beermen to the league’s best offense (111.4 offensive rating or ORTG, 5.6 points better than second place) and the championship.
Perez got to the rim thanks to an uncanny ability to accelerate from a standstill or shift gears to top speed. People often talk about the first step as a measure-2 of explosiveness, but Perez’s second and third steps are where he truly leaves people in the dust. He also showed great touch on shots where he would just extend his arms up over the defense and finish on high arcing finger rolls:
A huge part of Perez’s ability to generate rim pressure was his handles. They have often gone under-discussed due to how overwhelming his physical tools are, but he’s very shifty with the ball in his hands. He’s capable of changing directions multiple times over a single drive as if his defenders were practice cones. This shiftiness paired well with his ability to accelerate because as soon as he found an angle or a hole in the defense, he was gone. He managed to make himself fit in between tiny gaps provided by the defense and kept his dribble alive. Perez is not just an incredible athlete; he’s also wildly skilled:
Working out with JR Suque of Ankle Bully Academy, who patterned Perez’s training with regimens developed by elite trainers Drew Hanlen and Phil Handy, and conditioning coach John Lopez, the SMB star developed a knack for drilling jumpers off the dribble. Never quite known to be a shooter, he attempted the most triples in his career as a Beerman in the conference and knocked down pull-ups with regularity. He made 35.1 percent of pull-ups from three while attempting 2.4 of them per game (nearly half of his attempts from deep), – eight percentage points higher than the PBA average for pull-up threes, and five percentage points higher than the league average for threes in general. By being a threat to shoot at any time with his stepbacks, sidesteps, and pull-ups, defenses had to respect his jumper, which made it a bit easier for him to get inside.
NEWLY ELITE PLAYMAKER
With Terrence Romeo being out for the whole conference and Chris Ross missing time, Perez stepped up and took the reins of the San Miguel offense. We all know how it ended – the Beermen were the last team standing and held the best offense by a large margin. He finished the conference with a career-high 4.9 assists per game. This ranked ninth in the PBA with only decimals separating him and the likes of LA Tenorio, Robert Bolick, and Scottie Thompson. The advanced metrics also viewed his playmaking very favorably as he placed in the top 10 in Box Creation (a metric for measuring the number of opportunities a player creates for his teammates), Passer Rating )a statistic for describing how efficient a player is with his passes), and Passing Production (an estimate for how many good passes a player makes). No matter how you look at it, Perez has become more than just a scorer.
Like his scoring, his passing was deadly in transition. Defenses had a tendency to overreact to his forays toward the rim and his teammates were often left uncovered. It made sense to them because Perez was a more dangerous player in transition than literally anyone else. He also kept his head up in transition and scanned the floor for quick hitting opportunities to get his teammates a free layup:
Gravity, as a basketball concept, isn’t limited to shooters. It is an increase in defensive awareness of a particular player, and it applies to every action on the offensive end of the floor. In this case, Perez generated gravity because of his ability to get in the paint constantly and finish consistently. He warped the shape of opposing defenses and forced them to help to shut down his driving lanes and get the ball out of his hands. If there are two (or occasionally three or four) people on Perez, that means there are people open elsewhere. Perez’s increased playmaking burden resulted in shooters getting easy looks. Shooters made 39 triples (1.5 a game) off of assists from Perez. This was a key part of why the San Miguel offense was great. Open shots from your role players are more efficient and generally better than tough shots from your stars:
Perez spent time training himself in order to handle pick and roll coverages and find the right reads. It bore fruit this conference as he showed competence in picking defenses apart. Being a threat to just explode to the rim and pull up from deep, defenses threw multiple looks at Perez in an attempt to shut him down or at least slow him down. The improvement in his passing meant that he could punish when teams overplayed him.
Though a bit inconsistent, he showed flashes of being able to probe with the ball, keep his dribble alive, and wait patiently for an opening as defenses rotate. He managed to find the roller consistently with pocket passes and one-handed sling passes that go through tight defenses. Perez also found shooters in the weakside corner (although, not with enough regularity) and observed strongside help to give it to shooters one pass away. He used screens to get himself separated from his defender and drive downhill. He developed good enough vision to find bigs in the dunker spot after defenders rotated to cover him. Being able to involve more than just the screener is a sign that he has become a very good operator in the pick and roll:
The improvement in playmaking and the elite scoring at the rim culminated in a newfound ability to manipulate defenses by the threat of his passing. Pass fakes and subtle looks from Perez had the effect of reminding defenses that there was someone open and that he was capable of getting the ball to them. This forced defenses to get out of his way and give him the lane to drive in and finish comfortably.
This is a hallmark example of the fact that passing and scoring are complementary skills – one enhances the other. Being a good scorer means your teammates are more open, which makes passing easier. Being a good passer means defenses can’t ignore the threat of open shots from your teammates. The best playmakers are those who can score in bunches and find their teammates when they’re open. That’s what Perez has become.
WHAT’S NEXT
Perez isn’t the best playmaker in the league. At his core, he is wired to score. This leads to a few kinks to iron out (or at least temper) if he wants to make the plunge and be better at playmaking. This is not saying that he’s not good, but that there are ways to make him that much better.
First, he’s not a “natural” passer. He hasn’t played in a way that giving it to the open man is second nature to him. He has been an elite scorer all his life and that hasn’t changed. This results in him taking shots that would get lesser players benched. He has the athleticism and length to finish over the top of defenses, the coordination to contort himself midair to avoid defenses, and the strength to finish through contact. Because of all of this, he has made a ridiculous amount of tough shots:
Given his tools and level of skill, as long as he can somewhat see the rim, it’s a good shot in his eyes. However, there has to be a point where you consider that these aren’t the best shots available. In transition where the defense at the rim isn’t as tight, he made 73.5% PERCENTof his shots at the cup. In the halfcourt, this mark fell to 44.9 PERCENT. He missed the tough shots way more often than he made them.
Part of this is due to San Miguel’s spacing with two traditional bigs at all times. Part of this is because Perez more often than not went full throttle and found himself stuck in a crowded situation where he had nowhere to go. With the defense around him, a bad shot is a better end result than a turnover.
Because of his score-first wiring, he often missed teammates that were open in the perimeter. He’s capable of making these passes (and has done so a lot over the conference), but chose to attack himself. Again, this led to unideal situations. No matter how good you are, it’s hard to consistently beat multiple defenders that are draped around you. By being more patient with the ball instead of attacking head on most of the time, these situations could be avoided. His deliveries are also pretty limited. Passes that require distance are mostly two handed passes which limits the angles available to him as compared to overhead one-handed skip passes. More familiarity in these situations would result in him eventually learning when to make certain types of passes and which passes are most apt for a certain scenario.
Even when he had open passing lanes with shooters available in the perimeter, he sometimes ignored them or failed to see them. He doesn’t scan the floor as well in the halfcourt and often looks toward the rim before anything else. These missed reads that resulted in tough shots were a slight blemish on an otherwise incredible San Miguel offense. This is a very fixable issue that boils down to willingness to pass and improving on reading the defense. The passing lanes and the open shooters are already there for him to take. After all, open shots from guys like Marcio Lassiter and Simon Enciso would be catastrophic for opposing defenses. The more he feeds them, the fewer defenders would wall him up inside, and the easier his shots at the rim would be.
The last area for improvement is the accuracy of his passes. He’s just not a pinpoint passer. Improperly placed bounce passes, overshot entry passes, and outlets that were too strong were a common sight last conference. Of his 63 turnovers, 40 of them came from bad passes (63.5 percent). Passing, like dribbling and shooting, is a skill that requires time and effort to master. Given his rate of improvement, it’s safe to bet on him getting better at this too.
Perez isn’t a perfect playmaker. It’s hard to find someone that is, though. There are areas of his game that prevent him from being a point guard or primary in the same way that a guy like Jayson Castro or Johnny Abarrientos was. That doesn’t mean he can’t be like that in time if he works on it and he’s given the opportunities and reps needed to grow.
Perez is a rare talent that has been elite and yet still continues to grow. His growth serves as a reminder that scoring points are not the only thing that matters, and that the best players are those who make their teammates better. He is an athletic marvel that plays with skill and craft that is usually absent in those as explosive as him. The newfound ability to involve others only serves to make his scoring more dangerous, as defenses are left to choose between a guy who can get a layup practically anytime he wants to or open shots from elite shooters like Lassiter.
San Miguel’s offense became a pick your poison where either option was guaranteed to be lethal (and we haven’t even talked about June Mar Fajardo). Perez’s hard work bore fruit in the form of the hardware his team received at the end of the conference. The scary thing is that there are still areas where improvement is realistically attainable. All things considered, this probably won’t be the last time we see him win a championship and this isn’t the end to his remarkable growth as a player.
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