Dennis Schroder might be the king of scoring off the bench in the NBA, but a panel of 20 ESPN experts gave Montrezl Harrell of the Los Angeles Clippers the nod as the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year for the 2019-20 season.
Obviously, those polled — Kevin Arnovitz, Jerry Bembry, Nick DePaula, Nick Friedell, Kirk Goldsberry, Andrew Han, Chris Herring, Andrew Lopez, Tim MacMahon, Jackie MacMullan, Bobby Marks, Dave McMenamin, Kevin Pelton, Omar Raja, Jorge Sedano, Andre’ Snellings, Marc Spears, Eric Woodyard, Royce Young and Ohm Youngmisuk — merely gave their opinion on the matter, but they represent an interesting focus group.
The league announced last week that the end-of-season awards will only take performance through March 11 into account, as the NBA’s position is that doing so will give players not competing in Orlando an equal opportunity to get some votes.
When the announcement was made, many — including us — thought that Schroder’s chances of walking away with the award improved. Among qualifiers, he’s the leading bench scorer in the league. His 19 points, 3.6 rebounds and four assists per game are excellent numbers even for a starting guard, much less a reserve.
With respect to team record, the Thunder will enter play on July 30 at 40-24, good for fifth in the Western Conference. That’s where Harrell has him beat.
Harrell — who averages 18.4 points, seven rebounds and 1.6 assists per game — is one of the more important rotation pieces on the 44-20 Clippers. He has a cumulative plus-minus of plus-4.1 on the season, slightly higher than Schroder’s plus-4. Their record is good for second in the Western Conference, and when award races are close, the winner is typically the player whose team fared better during the regular season.
In the end, of the 20 experts polled, Harrell received nine votes, while Schroder received votes from seven: Bembry, Goldberry, Marks, Raja, Snellings, Woodyard and Young. Lou Williams, also of the Clippers, was the only other players to receive votes from the 20-person panel, picking up the other four.
On an interesting side note, 17 of the 20 panelists picked Giannis Antetokounmpo for League MVP, with the other three choosing LeBron James.
Again, their opinions aren’t binding in any way, but in short order, we’ll find out if their prediction rings true with respect to whether Schroder will walk away with the trophy.