Yes, I won!
A lot of folks get enraged when "the stats" suggest that Derrick Rose is not MVP. When "the stats" say that Dwight Howard is DPOY or that Lamar Odom is 6th Man, those same folks don't seem as vocal about their criticism. Just saying...
My only issue with choosing 6th man is the cutoff for minimum number of games started (GS). I'm not sure what it's supposed to be really. My first thought was to look at the WARP (after blending ezPM and 1-yr RAPM as I did previously for the MVP race) of all players who had below average number of GS, which turned out to be 28. If I did that, Jason Terry would win, but Lamar Odom wouldn't be eligible (he started 34 games). I decided to make it 41. While there were numerous players who started between 35-41 games (Serge Ibaka started 40 games — becoming a starter after the Kendrick Perkins trade), none of them eclipsed Odom in WARP, anyway. Not surprisingly, Jason Terry (I would argue one of the "true" 6th men in the league) came in 2nd here. James Harden is turning into a fantastic 6th man, and I'm sure there are 25 or so other teams that wouldn't mind having him start for them (including my own Dubs). Here's the list for you to ponder (and criticize or whatever):
2011 Top 25 "6th Men"
| RANK | NAME | TEAM | POS | POSS | GS | WARP | COMP | EZPM | RAPM |
| 1 | Lamar Odom | LAL | 4.0 | 4638 | 34 | 8.83 | 2.65 | 3.32 | 2.4 |
| 2 | Jason Terry | DAL | 1.5 | 4710 | 11 | 7.83 | 1.87 | 1.32 | 2.9 |
| 3 | James Harden | OKC | 2.0 | 3881 | 5 | 6.88 | 2.23 | 3.56 | 1.2 |
| 4 | Ty Lawson | DEN | 1.0 | 3999 | 28 | 6.58 | 1.82 | 2.83 | 1.1 |
| 5 | Ronnie Brewer | CHI | 2.5 | 3132 | 1 | 6.43 | 3.13 | 5.10 | 1.5 |
| 6 | George Hill | SAS | 1.0 | 3934 | 4 | 6.25 | 1.63 | 1.28 | 2.4 |
| 7 | J.R. Smith | DEN | 2.0 | 3681 | 6 | 5.93 | 1.70 | 1.52 | 2.3 |
| 8 | Serge Ibaka | OKC | 4.5 | 3941 | 40 | 5.90 | 1.33 | 2.04 | 0.9 |
| 9 | Thaddeus Young | PHI | 3.5 | 3794 | 1 | 5.88 | 1.50 | 0.85 | 2.6 |
| 10 | Tony Allen | MEM | 2.0 | 2708 | 30 | 5.08 | 2.56 | 4.68 | 0.7 |
| 11 | Jared Dudley | PHX | 3.0 | 3823 | 13 | 4.85 | 0.60 | 1.29 | 0.1 |
| 12 | Tracy McGrady | DET | 2.5 | 3008 | 37 | 4.83 | 1.69 | 2.93 | 0.7 |
| 13 | Wilson Chandler | NYK | 3.5 | 3422 | 30 | 4.69 | 0.92 | 0.05 | 2.2 |
| 14 | Jose Barea | DAL | 1.0 | 2942 | 3 | 4.55 | 1.50 | 2.73 | 0.5 |
| 15 | Toney Douglas | NYK | 1.0 | 3533 | 8 | 4.45 | 0.57 | 0.88 | 0.5 |
| 16 | Chase Budinger | HOU | 3.0 | 3192 | 19 | 4.40 | 0.95 | 0.56 | 1.7 |
| 17 | Nick Collison | OKC | 4.5 | 2668 | 2 | 4.35 | 1.76 | 0.56 | 3.5 |
| 18 | Louis Williams | PHI | 1.5 | 3326 | 0 | 4.20 | 0.58 | 1.25 | 0.1 |
| 19 | Amir Johnson | TOR | 4.0 | 2174 | 27 | 4.19 | 2.72 | 3.55 | 2.3 |
| 20 | Rudy Fernandez | POR | 2.0 | 3155 | 2 | 4.14 | 0.74 | 0.77 | 1.0 |
| 21 | Taj Gibson | CHI | 4.0 | 2970 | 19 | 4.14 | 1.00 | 1.56 | 0.7 |
| 22 | C.J. Miles | UTA | 2.0 | 3503 | 17 | 4.12 | 0.30 | -0.74 | 1.7 |
| 23 | Jeff Foster | IND | 5.0 | 1733 | 3 | 4.02 | 3.99 | 6.27 | 2.1 |
| 24 | Marcin Gortat | PHX | 5.0 | 2849 | 10 | 3.98 | 1.01 | 2.29 | -0.1 |
| 25 | Ryan Anderson | ORL | 4.0 | 2450 | 13 | 3.87 | 1.60 | 1.49 | 2.1 |
[...] Popcorn Machine ← The City 2011 6th Man [...]
[...] for my previous award posts (MVP, DPOY, 6th Man, and MIP), I blended ezPM and 1-yr RAPM data and used that blend to calculated WARP (wins above [...]