With Purefoods failing to make giant strides this year, Negrense James Yap also lost his PBA Most Valuable Player citations.

The 6-foot-3 guard from Escalante City, whose impressive sophomore season in 2005-2006 ended with an MVP award, made the shortlist this year but was not included in the Top 3 that had eventual winner Willie Miller of Alaska, Gary David of Air21 and Mac Cardona of Talk N' Text.

Yap, whose team finished with a 6-12 record in the recent Fiesta Cup, was also nominated for the sportsmanship award during the Leo Awards Night at the Araneta Coliseum last night and finished third in the voting.

David, also the Most Improved Player and a member of the All-Defensive Team, won the sportsmanship award. It was the second such award for Miller, who also won

in his sophomore season in 2002 while the league's more renowned players were with the national team for the Busan Asian Games.

He became the first guard to win a second MVP trophy while joining the elite ranks of Ramon Fernandez, Alvin Patrimonio, Bogs Adornado, Abet Guidaben, Benjie Paras and Danny Ildefonso to winning at least two.

Miller, who celebrated his birthday yesterday, totaled 2,671 votes after garnering the most from representatives of the media, statistics, television coveror ABC-5, players and the PBA.

Cardona, voted in as the TNT-PBA Fiesta Cup's Best

Player of the Conference, was a far second with a 1,283 total and David 1,019.

Yap was also unable to break into the mythical team, led by Miller, who was joined in the first team by David, Sta. Lucia Realty's

Kelly Williams, TNT's Jay Washington and San Miguel Beer's Dorian Pena.

Cardona was relegated to the second Mythical Team along with Air21's Wynne Arboleda and Arwind Santos, SMB's Ildefonso and TNT's Yancy de Ocampo.

Williams handily won over Santos and SMB's LA Tenorio for Rookie of the Year honors, becoming only the second Realtor to be so honored after Zandro Limpot in 1993. Ronald Tubid of Ginebra was named Mr. Energy.*CPT

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