NBA: Top 10 candidates for 2017-18 Sixth Man of the Year Award

Heading into the 2017-18 NBA season, the race for the Sixth Man of the Year Award feels wide open. Here are the top 10 candidates.

Other than the Defensive Player of the Year Award, there is no NBA honor more focused on one side of the court than the league’s Sixth Man of the Year Award.

Since the first year the award was handed out in 1982-83, only two players — Cliff Robinson and Roy Tarpley — are acknowledged as “forwards/centers,” with the overwhelming majority being guards. In fact, the only forward to win the award over the last decade was Lamar Odom in 2010-11, with the others all being high-scoring, usually inefficient guards.

This is one of the simplest awards to give out on a yearly basis, as it almost always seems to go to the highest-scoring guard coming off the bench. Preference is given to microwave scorers on more competitive teams, but for the most part, it’s pretty straightforward.

Heading into a new season, however, it can be one of the trickier awards to predict, especially with the stipulation that a Sixth Man of the Year must play more games coming off the bench than with the starting lineup.

Injuries can easily force a bench scorer into the starting five, as can a shooting slump, a trade or a coach changing around his lineups to find what works best for the team. Since we don’t even know what the starting lineups for the 2017-18 campaign will be yet, it makes it even more difficult to sort through.

However, since we’ve been taking a look at the top candidates for each individual award all week long, it’s time to take a stab at the top 10 candidates for the 2017-18 Sixth Man of the Year Award.

Honorable Mentions:  Jae Crowder, Nerlens Noel, Norman Powell, Dario Saric, Will Barton, Rudy Gay, Greg Monroe, Lance Stephenson, Jahlil Okafor, Terrence Ross, Cody Zeller, Donovan Mitchell, Taj Gibson, Malik Monk, Kelly Oubre Jr., Jordan Crawford, T.J. Warren