This story sounds very familiar, so I will make this brief. Jamal Crawford was the overwhelming choice of sportswriters for the 6th Man Award. Of the 122 sportswriters who voted, 110 chose Crawford for this award.
The official press release from the NBA explains why Crawford was so popular with the voters.
Crawford, Atlanta’s second leading scorer at 18 points a game, led the league in that category among players who didn’t start a game and paced the team in scoring 27 times.
So once again, scoring dominates an NBA player evaluation.
According to the above press release, this award works as follows: In order to be eligible, players had to have come off the bench in more games than they started. Players were awarded five points for each first-place vote, three points for each second-place vote and one point for each third-place vote.
Last season, 268 players were technically eligible for this award. From this sample of players, Table One reports the top 40 in terms of Wins Produced.
Table One: The Top 6th Men in 2009-10
Topping the list is Lamar Odom, who did receive one first place vote and consideration from nine of the 122 sportswriters. In other words, Odom was ignored by 113 voters. More sportswriters paid attention to Manu Ginobili. But the winner of this award in 2008 only received votes from 33 of the participating writers.
Much more attention was paid to Jason Terry, who won the award last season. Only 22 sportswriters didn’t think Terry deserved consideration this season. What does Terry do to deserve such love from the writers? Yes, like Crawford, Terry is also a scorer.
There is some hope. Anderson Varejao is not considered a scorer. And two sportswriters thought this particular non-scorer deserved the award. Furthermore, 52 more writers – or about 44% of the total – thought Varejao ranked in the top three among all 6th men. Maybe in a few years (or decades), players like Varejao – who produce many wins without scoring – will get a level of attention from sportswriters that is proportional to their productivity.
Let me close by noting that I have completed my analysis of every player in the 2009-10 regular season. So as each player award is announced I will be offering similar comments. And I will also be offering reviews of the 2009-10 regular season for each individual team. These posts should be the primary offering this summer.
– DJ
The WoW Journal Comments Policy
Our research on the NBA was summarized HERE.
The Technical Notes at wagesofwins.com provides substantially more information on the published research behind Wins Produced and Win Score
Wins Produced, Win Score, and PAWSmin are also discussed in the following posts:
Simple Models of Player Performance
What Wins Produced Says and What It Does Not Say
Introducing PAWSmin — and a Defense of Box Score Statistics
Finally, A Guide to Evaluating Models contains useful hints on how to interpret and evaluate statistical models.
Wages of Wins Journal 
brgulker
April 28, 2010
Interesting that Milwaukee had two players on the top 40 and neither received a vote — there is a reason this team was successful …
Italian Stallion
April 28, 2010
I would have voted for Ginobli.
Statistically he’s right near the top and non statistically he seems to possess a lot of attributes that help “teams” win important games and go far in the playoff.
He can also dominate parts of a game and really change things. Not many players can do that.
He’s one of my favorite players in the league and IMHO underrated despite being held in such high regard anyway.
Mo
April 28, 2010
I would imagine that a lot of people ignored Lamar Odom and the other guys that started 30+ games because they didn’t consider them sixth men, but fifthish men.
ilikeflowers
April 28, 2010
No surprise that the Jazz have improved relative to the Nuggets this postseason (Player, Increased Min, wp48 – all per game):
Anderson -3 (0.244)
Billups +1 (0.214)
Nene +5 (0.198)
Melo +3 (0.160)
Lawson -1 (0.156)
(+0.796 wp48 per game)
vs
Boozer +6 (0.243)
Korver +6 (0.220)
Williams +4 (0.216)
Millsap +3 (0.143)
Okur -26 (-0.005)
(+4.201 wp48 per game – this is just assuming that Okur’s minutes have been replaced by players with wp48 of just zero – in otherwords this is likely significantly underestimating the positive impact of the ‘loss’ of Okur)
The Jazz are simply allocating minutes more effectively where they can (whether this was their intention or not). I doubt that the Nuggets will win another game.
Sunrise
April 28, 2010
What does this award really say?
Jamal may not be starting, he still makes 4 more minutes a game than first teamer Mike Bibby.
Looking forward to the team & player reviews.
Tindall
April 28, 2010
“So once again, scoring dominates an NBA player evaluation.”
Scoring played a huge factor, but the success of the Hawks year-over-year was likely the determining factor. For example, Corey Maggette came off the bench for the lowly Warriors in 08-09 and did not receive any 6th Man consideration.
dberri
April 28, 2010
Maggette only played 51 games in 2008-09. Voters tend to prefer players who actually played.
Alvy
April 28, 2010
I think there was a continuous theme with the Atlanta Hawks this year, and it was about progression, and getting “better,” or winning more games than the last season. So, I think voters, while still considering PPG, made the conclusion that ATL’s high-scoring bench player contributed to that theme—which he did. I don’t think I have to continue further to illustrate the voters’ reasoning, but that’s that, regardless of what the award means anymore in the NBA.
Rockets fan
April 28, 2010
How horrible was Landry on the Kings? He left the Rockets with a pretty healthy WS. I did notice that, with the Kings, he continued to score at a very efficient clip, but could not rebound to save his life.
Tindall
April 28, 2010
Ok, how about a few examples from this year’s 6MoY voting?
Al Harrington – 17.7 ppg, 72 games played (15 starts)
Al NoSharington received only 1/610 points, yet was only .3 ppg behind Crawford.
Anderson Varejao – 8.6 ppg, 76 games played (7 starts)
He received 126/610 points, yet scored the second lowest number of points among those receiving 6 MoY votes.
Voter’s look to team success in evaluating 6MoY, much like other awards. I recall you pointing out in WoW that Kevin Garnett went from MVP one season (winning ~55 games) to barely receiving any votes the next season (winning ~30 games). In the case of Crawford they noted the team’s increased success upon his arrival and his overall improvement as a player (as Win Score will attest) and gave him the award.
minutes played also looks to be a big factor
Tim
April 28, 2010
I’m going to go with a non-snarky post for once — (IS and RAM clearly understand this POV, and likely feel similarly), 90%+ of WoW is great, and the 6th man analysis is always good evidence of how the metric can be used…
I would even say most NBA voters understand Ginobli and LO are the “best” 6th men, but they likely don’t consider either player legitimate candidates for the award since we all know they are starters, filling the 6th man role in accordance with particularly acute coaching strategies.
Tindall
April 28, 2010
I look forward to the RoY analysis and 09/10 roundup. Brandon Jennings is the poster boy for why viewpoints like Win Score are necessary.
Dre
April 29, 2010
I would say the “Of the Year” and “All Star Game” are the two least offensive things to the WP48 metric.
There are many odd quirks about the “Of the Year” award that have little to do with the title. For instance, every analyst I hear acknowledges that MVP is for a player on a winning and likely Championship caliber team. 6th man has the odd stigma of the person counting as a “real” 6th man. Defensive Player they do tend to select fairly well.
Obviously all star games are voted by fans and fans love “Superstars” when they are away. So as the all-star game is an away game to pretty much every fan, this makes sense.
We’ll have to wait for the All-NBA teams. I have a sneaking suspicion that Carmelo will beat out Gerald Wallace for the 3rd team, which will be sad.
todd2
April 29, 2010
There’s an old saw: it’s not important who starts a game, it’s important who finishes. Kinda makes the 6th man issue moot.
Rick H.
April 29, 2010
todd2,
Or the saw could go: it’s not important who starts a game– it’s important who plays 40+ MPG.
Tim
April 29, 2010
Re: “We’ll have to wait for the All-NBA teams. I have a sneaking suspicion that Carmelo will beat out Gerald Wallace for the 3rd team, which will be sad.”
Don’t worry Dre, Gerald Wallace is a lock for the All-Steroids Team.
Chicago Tim
April 29, 2010
Perhaps Crawford deserves the award because he convinced Josh Smith to stop shooting ill-advised threes. See this classic comment by horsecow from earlier this year:
https://dberri.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/the-story-of-the-2009-10-season-might-just-be-happening-in-atlanta/#comment-66425
John Giagnorio
April 29, 2010
Ah Jamal Crawford, how far you’ve come since being terrible on the Bulls.