The Increasingly Abstract Sixth Man of the Year Award

How we measure the NBA’s best reserve player has never been more complex and without definition than it is today

More than many other sports, basketball seems to have a cycle of discussions and debates around awards season. Every year, people seem to have hotly contested conversations over the qualifications for an award as much as the deserving winner. For the last couple of seasons it has been the Most Improved Award that was the subject of ire, with winners Julius Randle (2021) and Ja Morant (2022) creating discussions about what “most improved” actually means.

This year the debate has circled around another member of the New York Knicks: Immanuel Quickley. In the Sixth Man of the Year race, Quickley came in second to Malcolm Brogdon of the Boston Celtics. Many voters had voiced concern over the fact that Quickley’s best games came when he started, whereas Brogdon did not start any games. This discourse has made me wonder about a topic I have wondered about before: what is the true definition of the sixth man?

A Variance of Numbers