NBA: Top 10 candidates for 2019-20 Sixth Man of the Year
By Phil Watson
81. . . . Fred VanVleet. 8. player
Fred VanVleet has been on a steady climb since making the Toronto Raptors as an undrafted free agent in 2016.
Last season, VanVleet was limited to 64 games during the regular season but made the first 28 starts of his career after finishing a surprising third in the Sixth Man of the Year voting in 2017-18.
With a career-high workload, VanVleet produced career-high counting numbers, averaging 11.0 points, 4.8 assists and 2.6 rebounds in 27.5 minutes per game, while experiencing a small dip in shooting efficiency, hitting 41.0 percent overall and 37.8 percent on 4.6 3-point tries a game.
While his overall playoff numbers didn’t pop off the page — 8.0 points and 2.6 assists in 24.7 minutes per game on 39.2 percent shooting overall while hitting 38.8 percent on 4.1 deep tries a game — what VanVleet did from Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals through Toronto raising the Larry O’Brien Trophy was the stuff of legend.
Over the last nine games of the Raptors’ run, VanVleet averaged 14.7 points per game while shooting an absolutely ridiculous 52.6 percent from 3-point range on 6.3 attempts a game.
Talk about heating up at the right time.
The Raptors enter this season with some holes in their title-winning lineup after the free-agent departures of Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green. But VanVleet isn’t a likely candidate to see much time at the 2. At just 6-feet, VanVleet can already have problems matching up with point guards.
Asking him to guard on the wings is a bridge too far.
That said, Toronto will need him to be more like the guy who put up those astounding numbers to close out the postseason, as opposed to the player who shot 25.6 percent overall and 19.5 percent from 3 through the first 15 games of the playoffs, averaging 4.0 points in 20.1 minutes a game.
But the voters know who he is, based on his finalist status in 2017-18, and that gives him a chance to make another impression.
The Raptors have one Sixth Man of the Year winner in their history, Lou Williams in 2014-15.