Nikola Mirotic Is Sixth Man Of The Year, Not Rookie Of The Year

Over the past month, a strong contingent of pundits have pushed Chicago Bulls forward Nikola Mirotic and Philadelphia 76ers center Nerlens Noel into the thick of the Rookie of the Year conversation.

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What was once a one-horse race, spearheaded by the drastically improved play of Mirotic and Noel, has forced the consensus ROY favorite, Andrew Wiggins, to turn it up an extra notch over the last several weeks.

While a well-founded case can be built around both Mirotic’s and Noel’s respective rookie merits, Wiggins has consistently been the most productive rookie for the majority of the season. (For a more detailed breakdown as to why Wiggins deserves to be the Rookie the Year, click here.)

However, with all the hoopla surrounding Niko’s ROY credentials, it is a little mindboggling as to why Mirotic is not receiving the same brand of hype when it comes to winning the 2014-15 Sixth Man of the Year award.

Certainly, Mirotic does not fit the physical profile of your typical 6MOTY winner — just like teammate Taj Gibson, and how he eventually got robbed of the award just last season.

The leading candidates and perceived top sixth men this year, to be specific, are all ball-handling wizards capable of scoring in bunches through their highly-aesthetic ball-in-hand playmaking skills. By all accounts, the trio of guards spearheading the incumbent campaign’s 6MOTY talks include the Boston Celtics’ Isaiah Thomas, the Los Angeles Clippers’ Jamal Crawford, and the Toronto Raptors’ Louis Williams.

In contrast, Mirotic is a gangly 6-foot-10 forward best served when utilized as the Bulls’ resident stretch 4.

The 24-year-old Montenegrin shares a lot more in common, however, with the aforementioned leading candidates than one would initially anticipate. Most glaringly, much like Thomas and Williams, Mirotic accrues the majority of his points from the modern-day NBA holy trinity of scoring — specifically , from the 3-point line, at the rim, and the free throw line, a.k.a. the most efficient spots in basketball.

But, what makes Mirotic more deserving than the incumbent trio of favorites?

Judging by their anecdotal numbers, Niko assuredly does not stack up. In addition, Thomas, Williams, and Crawford have all served as their respective teams’ unequivocal pendulum-changing dynamo off the bench for the entirety of the season.

On the other hand, Niko was in and out of the Bulls’ rotation during the dreary months of January and February, and had not played more than 20 minutes a game until March came and went.

The field for the Sixth Man of the Year award is quite decrepit this season, however.

Explicitly, while Crawford has continued to defy his actual age — giving Father Time one hell of a fight — when he’s played this season, he has missed the last Clippers’ last 15 contests due to a deep calf bruise.

More discouragingly, though, Lob City has been playing their best basketball without the services of J-Crossover. With starting shooting guard J.J. Redick assuming a bigger role, the Clippers recently ripped of a seven-game winning streak, and have won eight of their last nine games.

In fact, over the month of March, Redick posted a nearly identical stat line as All-Star off guard Klay Thompson — while producing at a higher level of scoring efficiency, per Basketball-Reference.

Likewise, Thomas has been, by far, the most productive bench player in the association, averaging 22.3 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 5.8 assists per 36 minutes of play on a TS% (true shooting percentage) of 57.2 percent and a PER of 20.3.

However, something has to be said about a player’s impact on a team’s morale when you were essentially run out of two cities in a seven-month span.

After his trade deadline deal, which brought the diminutive point guard to Beantown, Thomas has been performing admirably — and much like Mirotic over the past month, has served as the C’s primary offensive weapon down the stretch.

If he were to have the type of stable success he’s enjoyed with Boston for the entire year, Thomas would most likely be the runaway winner of the prestigious award. However, when considering the external consternation surrounding his departures in Sacramento, and in particular, Phoenix, his me-first attitude and uncivil ball-dominant style has to factor in when determining the true winner of the 6MOTY.

Thus, when taking into account extraneous factors, like the animosity a team has for their own teammate in player A, or the improved synergy a team displays with the noted absence of player B, the two genuine candidates for the Sixth Man of the Year award boils down to Lou Williams and Nikola Mirotic.

Undeniably, the same argument made for Wiggins, and his case for ROY, can be made for Williams; he’s played more meaningful minutes and he’s produced consistently throughout the entirety of the season.

In fact, he was one of the major reasons as to why the Raptors got out to such a scorching start to their year, despite the absence of their All-Star shooting guard, DeMar DeRozan, who was sidelined with a severe groin injury.

But, at its core, the Sixth Man of the Year Award, unlike ROY, is not meant to be a volume-based accolade. Contrarily, the genuine delineation of the trophy should denote the winner’s efficiency, and ability to produce, in the context of his given role.

By that definition, the bearded assassin, Mirotic, should be the natural victor.

For one, Niko has answered the bell — when given consistent minutes — at every turn this season. For such reasons, his per 36 minutes numbers are among the best at his position; and more convincingly, during the month of March, in which he enjoyed 30.8 minutes of floor time per contest, Mirotic averaged over 20.8 points and 7.6 rebounds per game on 57.8 TS% and an individual offensive rating of 109.

Although he only shot 44.1 percent from the field and 26.3 percent from beyond the arc (on 6.3 attempts per game), he managed to get to the charity stripe over  7.3 times a contest over the stretch of 15 games.

Secondly, and more importantly, his inherent style of play is more imperative to the Bulls’ success than what sweet Lou brings to the purple Dinos.

Chiefly, Williams’ isolation, ball-in-hand brand of scoring is fairly redundant to the high-volume, mano-a-mano approach their two star players, in DeRozan and Kyle Lowry, take to the floor on a nightly basis.

Conversely, Mirotic, with his size and versatility to swing between the 3 and 4 positions, brings a much-needed tone of modern spacing to coach Tom Thibodeau’s historically anemic offensive scheme.

Not since 2010-11 and 2011-12, when a healthy Derrick Rose graced his presence on an NBA court, had the Bulls sported a top-10 offense. This season, however, spearheaded by the multi-faceted offensive repertoire of Mirotic, the Bulls are currently 10th in the association in offensive efficiency.

Most notably, in the month of March, when the Bulls played the majority of the season without two of their top three scorers, in Rose and Jimmy Butler, Chicago’s offense never wavered — driven in large by the rise of Mirotic.

Moreover, even though the Bulls house a deep battalion of skilled, veteran bigs, like Pau Gasol, Joakim Noah, and Taj Gibson, the trio are inborn interior savants, and naturally prefer to operate 15 feet and in.

As such, Mirotic brings an entirely different dynamic to Chicago’s frontcourt rotation; for example, giving opposing bigs fits with his penchant for hitting pull-up threes, getting defenders to lean one way with his pump fake as he prances around them towards the hoop, embellishing incidental contact and repeatedly earning free points at the free throw line.

Thanks to his varied skill set, the Bulls often feature him as a stretch 4 on quick pindowns and as the screener in pick-and-pop situations. In doing so, it enables Niko to attack an off-balance, scrambling defense, and in turn, it causes the opposition to restlessly sweat every time Mirotic flares for an open look at a three.

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More importantly, with Rose out once again with a bum knee, Thibs has turned to Mirotic — not Butler, nor Pau — to carry the Bulls’ offense in fourth quarters of tight games. Serving as Chicago’s primary option in crunch time situations, Mirotic led the league in fourth quarter scoring for the month of March, pouring in 9.1 points per game during the closing period.

Most impressively, Mirotic scored at an effective field goal rate (which accounts for both 2-point and 3-point field goal makes) of 62.5 percent and a TS% of 69.4 percent during the last five minutes of the games played in March.

Simply put: Niko is an absolute assassin when given the reigns to takeover a game. Which, in many ways, is what the 6MOTY award is all about.

With that being said, much like the NBA’s slew of other individual awards — namely, the MVP — the interpretation of the award’s true meaning can be annotated in a plethora of ways.

If you value raw statistical output, then Isaiah Thomas should be the winner. If you value consistent production throughout the entire season, then Lou Williams is your man. If you  gauge who the winner should be by the merit of who performed the most efficaciously, given the context of his role off the bench, then look no further than Nee-Ko-La — the newest bearded sensation of the NBA.

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