In 1987, he was drafted first overall by the Great Taste Coffee Makers and played alongside Ricardo Brown to lead the team to the PBA Open Conference finals (In Game 3, he equalled Brown's PBA all-time record for the most points scored by a Filipino in a single Finals game - 48 points) and later captured his first PBA-All Filipino Cup championship. In his rookie season, he earned the 1987 PBA Rookie of the Year award and was named in the All-Star Mythical Five Selection, where he became the third first year-rookie player ever to be named in the Mythical Five Selection after Arnie Tuadles (1979) and Ricardo Brown (1983). He also finished the season as the first rookie player ever to lead the league in scoring.
