We apply perturbative QCD to investigate the near threshold heavy quarkonium photoproduction at large momentum transfer. From an explicit calculation, we show that the conventional power counting method will be modified and the three quark Fock state with nonzero orbital angular momentum dominates the near threshold production. It carries a power behavior of $1/(-t)^5$ for the differential cross section. We further comment on the impact of our results on the interpretation of the experiment measurement in terms of the gluonic gravitational form factors of the proton.