Perez, 6 others lead Fil-foreign PBA Draft applicants

FILE: Lyceum of the Philippines University (LPU) star CJ Perez. (Photo: Cjay Perez/Facebook)

MANILA — CJ Perez leads the cast of Filipino-foreign players who formally declared for the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Draft by submitting their applications.

Yes, that CJ Perez.

The league declared the Lyceum star and Gilas Cadet, born to a Filipino mother, a Filipino-foreigner because he was born overseas, specifically in Hong Kong, based on league rules.

PBA rules also say that Filipino-foreign players have an earlier draft application deadline so that the league gets ample time to look at their eligibility. For this year’s draft, the Filipino-foreign draft application ended on Friday.

The list of eligible Filipino-foreign draft applicants will be revealed on Dec. 3, the same day the application period for homegrown players will end.

Perez is projected to be among those to be selected early in the Dec. 16 draft.

In fact, Columbian already expressed its intent to select the King Pirate, the first overall pick of the draft.

Meanwhile, three other Filipino-foreign players currently playing in the Maharlika Pilipinas Basketball League also threw their names into the PBA Draft.

Navotas’ Matt Salem, San Juan’s CJ Isit, and Batangas City’s Paul Varilla applied for the top tier league draft.

Also leading the Filipino-foreign cast were former Adamson gunner, Robbie Manalang, and PBA D-League standouts, Trevis Jackson and John Ragasa.