Back when he was playing basketball rather than commenting on it on TNT, Jamal Crawford used to come into Madison Square Garden following his tenure with the Knicks and ask your faithful correspondent where he stood on the list of all-time 4-point plays.

Crawford made an art form out of hitting a 3-point shot while getting fouled and then converting the free throw, and he was rewarded for that, among other things, with a trio of Sixth Man Awards in 2010, 2014 and 2016, making him the first three-time winner of the award.

At the time he won the third, Barack Obama was president of the United States and nobody else had won three of these awards, although somebody on the following list eventually matched that accomplishment.

They call it the “Sixth Man” award because every team has five starters, and every team has a key contributor who comes off the bench game after game after game after game and, in the best cases, becomes a game-changer. The Sixth Man Award has only been given out since 1983, meaning all the older retired players have a legitimate beef when they say their generations do not get enough national respect because they played prior to the era of million dollar contracts and billion dollar television deals.

And they have a point. So in coming up with these rankings, some deep diving into basketball historical records was needed, because nobody should ever forget the accomplishments of the folks who paved the way for the way we live our lives in 2024.

Who won NBA Sixth Man of the Year 2023?

Malcolm Brogdon of the Boston Celtics won the award last season prior to signing with the Portland Trail Blazers in free agency, where he now toils in anonymity while his former teammates are tearing up the East.

Who has the most NBA Sixth Man of the Year Awards?

Jamal Crawford and Lou Williams have both won the Sixth Man Award three times.

NBA Sixth Man of the Year Award History

The award came into existence in the 1982-83 season, and the NBA later decided to name the actual trophy the John Havlicek Trophy in honor of the Celtics Hall of Famer who came off the bench in Boston and piled up the championship hardware, winning eight of them over the course of his 16-year career.

Who are the most famous 6th Man in the NBA?

That is a generational debate, with younger folks choosing Crawford and older folks opting for Havlicek and pointing to his eight championship rings as the tiebreaking quotient.

Ranking the Top 10 Greatest Sixth Man of the Year Winners in NBA History

  1. Kevin McHale (1981-1993)

Position: Power forward
Career Stats: 17.9 points, 7.3 rebounds
Awards: All-Star: 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991. All-NBA First Team 1987. All-Defensive First Team 1986, 1987, 1988. Sixth Man of the Year 1985, 1985.

Best known for taking out Kurt Rambis of the Lakers during the 1984 NBA Finals with a clothesline, McHale was a former Mr. Minnesota Basketball who went to become a top executive for the Minnesota Timberwolves after his playing career was over. McHale loved to talk about ice fishing in his hometown of Hibbing, Minn., and he was the No. 3 overall draft pick in 1980 after Celtics general manager Red Auerbach traded the first overall pick to Golden State for Joe Barry Carroll and the No. 3 pick, widely considered one of the most lopsided deals in NBA history. McHale was the Sixth Man behind Cedric “Cornbread” Maxwell.

  1. Bill Walton (1974-1987)

Position: Center
Career Stats: 13.3 points, 10.5 rebounds
Awards: NBA Finals MVP 1987, Most Valuable Player 1978, NBA All-Star 1977, 1978, All-Defensive First Team 1977, 1978. College Player of the Year 1977, 1978.

Foot injuries hampered Walton, a native of LaMesa, California, throughout his NBA career after he led UCLA to back-to-back championships in 1972 and 1973. He became a superlative Sixth Man for the NBA campion 1986 Boston Celtics after Auerbach decided to take a flyer on a famously freakish ex-hippie who went on to become a very successful broadcaster after his playing days ended. Walton’s son, Luke, played and coached in the NBA.

  1. Detlef Schrempf (1986-2001) 

Position: Forward
Career Stats: 13.2 points, 6.2 rebounds per game
Awards: NBA All-Star 1993, 1995, 1997. Sixth Man of the Year 1991, 1992.

Although the Indiana Pacers of the 1990s were best known as Reggie Miller’s team, it was the production provided off the bench by this native of Leverkusen, West Germany that helped propel the Pacers to their annual postseason wars with the New York Knicks. Schrempf was the first native of Germany to make an NBA All-Star team, and he later played in the NBA Finals against Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls after signing with the Seattle SuperSonics as a free agent. He represented West Germany at the 1984 and 1992 Olympics.

  1. Ricky Pierce (1983-1998)

Position: Forward
Career Stats: 14.9 points, 2.4 rebounds
Awards: NBA All-Star: 1991. Sixth Man Award winner 1987, 1990.

The Milwaukee Bucks had some truly terrific teams throughout the 1980s that never could bring what Kareem- Abdul-Jabbar had brought: an NBA championship. One of the primary reasons was because coach Don Nelson decide that his best shooter would be a specialist as a Sixth Man, believing that Pierce, a native of Dallas, Texas, would be even more effective if he was matched against defenders who were not good enough to start for their own teams. Over six seasons in Milwaukee he started only 46 games but averaged more than 17 points in an era when the 3-point shot was not often utilized. Pierce still had 296 of them over a career that also included stops in Seattle, Indiana, San Diego (Clippers), Detroit, Denver, Charlotte and Golden State.

  1. James Harden (2010-present)

Position: Point guard
Career Stats: 24.3 points, 7.3 assists, 5.6 rebounds
Awards: NBA All-Star 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022. First-team All-NBA 2015, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020. Most Valuable Player 2018

Although he has been a starter for most of his career and remains one these days for the Los Angeles Clippers, Harden first made his mark in the league by coming off the bench for the Oklahoma City Thunder in a three-star alignment that also included Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. The trio could have become a dynasty if the Thunder had not lowballed Harden with a contract offer in 2012 in which they said he was not being offered starter’s money because he was not a starter. The Los Angeles native countered by arguing that he did exactly what the team had asked of him and should not be penalized financially for coming off the bench. To this day, folks in Oklahoma City have not forgiven owner Clay Bennett and general manager Sam Presti for the decisions that broke up that team when it was poised to win multiple NBA championships if they had held it together. It has taken a full decade for the Thunder to recover from the decisions that led Harden, Durant and Westbrook to leave.

  1. Toni Kukoc (1994-2006) 

Position: Forward
Career Stats: 11.6 points, 4.2 assists
Awards: Sixth Man of the Year, 1996, Euroleague MVP: 1990, 1991, 1993

The native of Split, Croatia was a Eurostash prospect that general manager Jerry Krause raved about to the Chicago media in the early 1990s, making Michael Jordan so jealous that when he was a member of the 1992 Dream Team, he and Scottie Pippen made it their personal mission to shut down and embarrass the young man who was then representing Yugoslavia. Once he finally arrived in the NBA, Kukoc was an invaluable member of the three-peat Bulls of the mid-1990s who defeated the Seattle Supersonics and the Utah Jazz (twice) to win NBA championships in 1994, 1995 and 1996. After Jordan retired, Kukoc went on to play for the Philadelphia 76ers, Atlanta Hawks and Milwaukee Bucks before becoming a special advisor to the commissioner, a position he holds to this day.

  1. Manu Ginobili (2002-2018)

Position: Shooting guard
Career Stats: 13.3 points, 3.5 assists
Awards: Sixth Man Award winner 2008. All-Star: 2005, 2011. All-NBA Third Team 2008, 2011. Olympics MVP 2004.

The native of Bahia Blanca, Argentina also was a Eurostash player, with the Spurs drafting the two-time Italian League Most Valuable player with the 57th pick of the 1999 NBA draft. The selection set the standard for finding gold in the second round of the draft, a strategy later utilized by the Denver Nuggets when they selected future MVP Nikola Jokic with the 41st pick in 2014. Ginobili was one of the most beloved player ever in San Antonio, a small market Texas team that embraced the Spurs as they made it to the NBA Finals and won championships in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2014. Ginobili played his entire NBA career with the Spurs and was a member of the gold medal winning Argentina national team that became the first international team to defeat Team USA at the 2002 World Championship in Indianapolis when such an achievement was considered an impossibility. Two years later, Argentina defeated Spain at the Beijing Olympics for that country’s only men’s basketball gold medal.

  1. Lou Williams (2006-2022)

Position: Guard
Career Stats: 13.9 points, 3.4 assists, 2.2 rebounds
Awards: Sixth Man Award 2015, 2016, 2019

The native of Memphis, Tennessee who grew up in Georgia was a scoring machine off the bench in the latter years of his career with the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Clippers. He was drafted 45th overall by Philadelphia in 2005 and played for the 76ers, Hawks and Raptors before finding his groove in the latter stages of his career. He was a backup to Kobe Bryant, was part of the trade that sent Chris Paul from the Clippers to the Rockets, and he scored 50 off the bench for the Clippers in 2018 when he averaged a career-high 22.6 points and 5.3 assists coming off the bench.  

  1. Jamal Crawford (2001-2022)

Position: Shooting guard
Career Stats: 14.6 points per game
Awards: Sixth Man Award 2010, 2014, 2016

Now making a name for himself broadcasting as part of Turner Sports coverage team, Jamal Crawford came out of Seattle and was a draft-night trade from Cleveland to Chicago, where he began as a young player tasked with replacing the scoring once provided by Michael Jordan. After four years, he was dealt to the New York Knicks and played at Madison Square Garden for four years before he went to Golden State and then Atlanta, where he won his first Sixth Man award in 2010. He spent one season with Portland before going to the Clippers, where he won his second and third Sixth Man awards before ending his career with the Timberwolves, Suns and Brooklyn Nets. At age 36, he was the oldest winner of this award. He also finished with 46 career four-point plays.

  1. John Havlicek (1963-1978)

Position: Forward
Career Stats: 20.8 points, 6.3 assists
Awards: NBA All-Star: 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978. All-NBA First Team 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974. All-Defensive First Team 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976. NBA Finals MVP 1974

Nicknamed “Hondo,” the native of Martins Ferry, Ohio won a national championship at Ohio State before being drafted by the Boston Celtics and spending his entire 17-year career with the Celtics, where his uniform number 17 hangs from the rafters. One of the most famous radio calls ever was Johnny Most’s “Havlicek stole the ball” off a play with 5 seconds left in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals against Philadelphia when Havlicek had his back to the inbounder underneath the basket but quickly turned, leaped and tipped the ball to teammate Sam Jones to preserve a one-point victory that sent the Celtics to the NBA Finals. When he retired, he held the NBA record for most games played, and teammates and opponents alike credited him with being one of the smartest players they had ever encountered. Havlicek died in 2019 at age 79.

Parameters of Rankings: There is a reason why they renamed the trophy for winning the Sixth Man Award to the John Havlicek trophy. He set the standard for players coming off the bench and leading their teams to greatness, and when you win six championships in your first seven seasons you have won all tiebreakers with the likes of the Jamal Crawford’s and Lou Williams’ of the world. All ratings are subjective, and for our Top 10 we have special weight to accomplishments achieved as a Sixth Man, even if that player also achieved greatness as a starter. International achievements also influenced our rankings, as two of the players cited above had Olympic moments that are recorded in the history books.

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