Earlier in the season I brought up the idea that Terrence Ross, with his 14 PPG average, might have an outside shot at winning the sixth man of the year award. Now that he just had a 26-point game to complement his 30-point game a week ago, I was ready to revisit that idea. I’m always on the lookout for underrated 6MOTY of the year candidates so that if I happen to pick some dark horse to win it and he actually does, I look like a basketball savant whose opinions should be treated as facts.
However nice Ross’ improvement has been, though, I have to admit at this point that he’s not in the running for 6MOTY of the year. At all. Not unless he leads the Magic on a furious winning streak to end the season and they get the sixth seed. He has the distinction of not having started a single game for his team, but there are two players in that same boat (no games started) who are scoring better than him on a per-game basis: Jordan Clarkson (16.8) and Lou Williams (19.2). If we’re being honest with each other right now, there’s no way Williams isn’t 6MOTY of the year. The award is basically the “chucker combo guard off the bench” award and right now Sweet Lou is the chuckeriest, comboiest, guardiest chucker combo guard coming off the bench in the league.
So I’ll just have to go back to appreciating Ross’ game for what it is, with no illusions about him winning any kind of awards this year. That’s actually not so hard because I’m loving his jumpshot this season. It’s “Pure Magic”, as they say in Orlando.