Unsurprisingly, Jamal Crawford of the Atlanta Hawks has been named the runaway winner of the NBA’s 6th Man of the Year award for 2009-10. The flat-out scorer received 580 of a possible 610 points in voting by sportswriters and broadcasters. He was followed by Jason Terry (Dallas Mavericks) and Anderson Varejao (Cleveland Cavaliers).
What I find interesting, if you peruse the previous winners of the award (via the link above), is that the award is heavily geared towards scoring guards and swingmen. Take a look at this list (in reverse chronological order back to 2002-03) and see the similarity in the players: Jamal Crawford, Jason Terry, Manu Ginobili, Leandro Barbosa, Mike Miller, Ben Gordon, Antawn Jamison and Bobby Jackson. The only exception on that list is Jamison.
Is this a factor of the way NBA teams are structured, or a bias in the voting on the award? Is someone like Varejao doomed to never winning the award, regardless of production, purely because he does not put up gaudy scoring numbers? Does the likes of hustle, defence and rebounding factor less in the voters minds than points per game? This is an interesting question. This year, Crawford clearly deserved the award in most people’s opinions (including my own), but given the history of the award it appears that a solid trend has formed.
Looking back over the list of winners, the last player with a strong defensive presence was Aaron McKie (2000-01) and prior to that the only other players with any defensive focus were Anthony Mason (1994-95) and Cliff Robinson (1992-93), but both of those were clearly multi-faceted players who contributed heavily on both ends.
Is it possible for a role player such as a pure point guard or a big-bodied banging centre to win the award? Only time will tell.
