The knee injury which sidelined Crispa’s scoring machine and PBA’s first back-to-back Most Valuable Player winner William “Bogs” Adornado prompted Atoy Co to work double time in offense that it made the Redmanizers equally formidable enough to win more championships.
And so it was, on this day, May 17, 1979, Co didn’t realize that he became the fastest player to reach the PBA’s 5,000-point club.
Looking back, ‘The Fortune Cookie’ wasn’t even paying attention to the 5,000 points as he had more important things to focus on – stepping up in the bigger shoes left by Adornado.
“Wala nga sa isip ko yung 5,000 points. Na-injured si Bogs, so siguro kailangan lang may mag-step up para punuan ang puntos na mawawala galing sa kanya,” wrote Co in a text message to Pinopystep.com.
But Co was just one of those players who filled in the huge void left by Adornado.
Freddie Hubalde had a breakout season in 1977, thus enabled him to win the MVP award that season.
“Hindi lang naman ako yung kailangan pumuno doon sa 20 to 25 points. Nagkataon lang na gumaling ako nung nawala si Bogs,” added Co.
Year 1979 was Co’s year as he not only helped Crispa in winning the most prestigious title All-Filipino, but he also wound up with the MVP award.
But the motivation to play better in the 1979 season was brought about by speculations that he’ll be traded by Crispa, which was coming off a title-less campaign the previous year – the first time in franchise history that the team wasn’t able to bring home a championship in one of the three conferences.
“May mga alingasngas noon na ‘ti-trade daw si Atoy’, nag-enroll ako sa gym, nagpakundisyon ako. Kaya yung 1979, bumalik yung laro ko,” added Co.
Co was able to do it consistently – every game – as not only he became the first player to reach the 5,000 points, but the first one to reach 10,000 points five years later.
