Jason Terry is making a strong case to win the Sixth Man of the Year Award in the NBA. The Dallas Mavericks have Terry coming off the bench still, and he has proved to be one of the most valuable members of the team this year. Terry is now 33 years old, but he is still playing great basketball for the Mavericks, helping lead them to one of the best records in the NBA.
Through the games of Sunday, Feb. 27, Terry was averaging 16 points and 4.4 assists per game off the bench. He is shooting 35 percent from three point range, and he is also giving the Mavericks 32 minutes per game. In the Feb. 27 game against the Toronto Raptors, Terry went for 19 points on 7-13 shooting, grabbing four rebounds and dishing out five assists. That was all after he scored 25 points on Saturday night against the Washington Wizards.
The main competition to Terry winning the award in the 2010-11 NBA season seems to be Jamal Crawford of the Atlanta Hawks. Crawford is averaging 15.1 points and 3.3 assists per game off the bench, playing almost 31 minutes per game for the Hawks.
Crawford is also the man who won the Sixth Man Award last year in the NBA while putting up 18 points per game. The year before that it was Terry who won the award, averaging 19.6 points and 3.4 assists per game for the Mavericks. With Manu Ginobili now starting for the San Antonio Spurs, it has also removed some stiff competition.
An award like this always seems to boil down to which player is doing the best on a good team. The success of a team has a lot to do with the buzz that surrounds the bench, and someone averaging 15 to 20 points off the bench for a horrible team is not going to be noticed as much. Terry, though, is doing it for a team that looks to make it deep into the 2011 Western Conference Playoffs.
One of the other arguments that goes well with deciding who should win the Sixth Man of the Year Award is what the team would look like if that player wasn’t there. In the example of Terry, it is hard to imagine that the Mavericks would be as successful as they are this year. With injuries to several of the other star players on that Dallas roster, Terry has had to step up big at times, and he is often one of the key players on the floor when the game is on the line.
This is one of those awards that is just about a shoe in at this point, and Terry is well deserving of his second Sixth Man of the Year Award.
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