I’ve given so little thought to the 6MOTY of the year race that I can’t even recall who the possible candidates are. Perhaps it’s too early in the season for me to even be thinking about such things; injuries happen all the time, and sixth men can be pressed into a starting role at a moment’s notice. I seem to remember stating that Julius Randle could be the league’s best sixth-man. Terrence Ross, if he ups his scoring, could also be in the conversation, but he’s more likely to be the sixth-best sixth-man than the best sixth-man. Lou Williams is in the mix like he always is. Then you have Jordan Clarkson, the “prototypical” sixth man (a prototype that I happen to intensely dislike).
He’s scoring sixteen PPG entirely off the bench, without a start to his name, and he does it in the way that all the great sixth-man chuckers have won the award: by just chucking shots like Kobeball and Crawfordball never went out of fashion. And, unlike some sixth men who win the award by coming off the bench despite being better than the starter at their position, you can make the real case that Clarkson isn’t the best shooting guard on his team, which means he deserves to come off the bench. That makes the award more legitimate in my eyes.
If somebody Lou Williams or Montrezl Harrell, players who should be starting, win 6MOTY of the year, I plan to protest by creating my own trophy and mailing it to the real winner. I don’t have the money to get a real trophy made but I do have a lot of spare Hot Pockets boxes that could be repurposed into a trophy with a little bit of Scotch tape.