DAVE Ildefonso admitted that making it to the top five of the PBA Season 49 Rookie Draft caught him by surprise.
“For me, I was really surprised because I didn’t know that I was getting picked that high,” he said during the broadcast of the proceedings on Sunday.
“I was really expecting mga late first round or even early second round.”
Ildefonso was not in Glorietta for the draft as he was with Strong Group Athletics competing in the Jones Cup in Taiwan.
But his absence hardly mattered as NorthPort took the second-generation star as the fifth pick of the annual rookie selection process.
Despite the situation, the Batang Pier leaned heavily on the 6-foot guard’s body of work from his time in National University and Ateneo to his two years with Suwon KT SonicBoom in the Korean Basketball League (KBL) and with Gilas Pilipinas as enough proof to the pedigree of the son of legend Danny Ildefonso.
And for that, the 24-year-old is just grateful.
“I’m really happy and I appreciate the bosses and all the people in NorthPort,” he said as he starts this new chapter with the Batang Pier.
“I just wanna say to all the fans as well that I’m gonna try my best, work hard, and I’m gonna try to bring us more wins.”
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