Warriors: Could Andre Iguodala win Sixth Man of the Year?
By Andrew Ites
It’s hard to believe Warriors wing Andre Iguodala has never won a Sixth Man of the Year Award. Can he win one at age 34?
The Warriors’ dynasty took off shortly after acquiring Andre Iguodala in a sign-and-trade on July 10th, 2013.
Golden State has won three championships in Iguodala’s five seasons with the team, and they’ve been completely dominant ever since transitioning Iggy to a sixth man role before the 2014-15 season.
While Iguodala has won an NBA Finals MVP during his Warriors career, he still doesn’t have a Sixth Man of the Year Award in his trophy case.
The Sixth Man of the Year is a fairly flawed award as it usually just goes to the bench player who scores the most points rather than the player who has the greatest impact on their respective team.
ESPN’s real plus-minus metric is my favorite stat for determining the total value of each player.
Iguodala has outperformed the Sixth Man of the Year in that statistic in each of the past three seasons.
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In 2015-16, Jamal Crawford scored 14.2 points per game off the bench for the Clippers compared to 7.0 for Iguodala. But Crawford had a real plus-minus of -2.31 compared to Iggy’s +1.69 because Iguodala is a much better defender and distributor.
In 2016-17, Eric Gordon scored 16.2 points per game off the bench for the Rockets compared to Iggy’s 7.6. However, Gordon had a real plus-minus of +1.03 compared to Iguodala’s incredible +3.53.
Last season Lou Williams scored 22.6 points per game off the bench for the Clippers compared to Iguodala’s 6.0, but Lou Will had a real plus-minus of +0.61 compared to Iggy’s +1.41.
That particular stat isn’t everything, but it shows that Iguodala has had a superior total impact on the game compared to the past three Sixth Men even though his scoring numbers haven’t been as high.
Iguodala should’ve won the award at least once in the past three seasons, and you could argue he should’ve won in all three years.
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Unfortunately, the voters are still looking at the wrong stats and figures when selecting Sixth Man of the Year and I don’t envision that changing anytime soon.
That factor, along with Iguodala’s age and a possible reduction in minutes moving forward, will prevent him from winning a well-deserved award.
Here are our other predictions on whether Warriors can win some awards next year: