The NBA announced the Sixth Man of the Year winner today, and Jamal Crawford took home his third such award and was the oldest ever winner as well. Will Barton came in fourth, behind Crawford, Andre Iguodala and Enes Kanter. The voting broke down fairly predictably along team-success lines, which made Barton's fourth-place finish actually first among non-playoff contenders.
1st place vote = 5 pts | 2nd place =3 pts | 3rd place =1 pt
Player | Team | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Total Points
Jamal Crawford | Clippers | 51 | 23 | 17 | 341
Andre Iguodala | Warriors | 33 | 35 | 18 | 288
Enes Kanter | Thunder | 19 | 20 | 27 | 182
Will Barton | Nuggets | 15 | 21 | 20 | 158
Evan Turner | Celtics | 3 | 7 | 10 | 46
Ryan Anderson | Pelicans | 4 | 6 | 5 | 43
Jeremy Lin |Hornets | 1 | 6 | 7 | 30
In 2015-16 Barton set career-highs in basically every category while playing more minutes this year than in all previous years combined. He played in all 82 games, which might have contributed to him getting tired down the stretch as his shooting and finishing wavered.
Until D.J. Augustin arrived, though, Will Barton was one of the only scorers on the bench and seemingly had carte-blanche to fire away at will and go 1-on-5 in his quest to get to the rim. He did both things better than he'd ever done them, and showed once again that Tim Connelly is pretty good at this diamond-in-the-rough thing.
Congrats on a great season, Will.
