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The Best Sixth Man In The NBA Is Two Toronto Raptors

Jamal Crawford is fun to watch, but he wasn't the NBA's best sixth man this year. For pure impact, no one player equaled Toronto's Cory Joseph and Patrick Patterson.
Photo by Peter Llewellyn-USA TODAY Sports

This article is part of VICE Sports' 2016 NBA Playoffs coverage.

The Los Angeles Clippers' Jamal Crawford was named the NBA's Sixth Man of the Year on Tuesday for the third time in his career, and good for him. Crawford is a righteous dude, one of the most respected and well-liked guys in the league, and he's a blast to watch when in full one-on-one mode. I also have a personal soft spot for him because he was the single most fun part of the atrocious New York Knicks teams I had to (read: chose to) watch while I was in college. He's been getting buckets off the bench for the better part of 16 years and there are few players more viscerally enjoyable to watch on a night when they have it going. But.

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But Crawford also shot 40.4 percent from the field and 34.0 percent from three on the year, and scoring is pretty much the only thing he does really well. He doesn't create all that often for others anymore—he tied a career-low with 2.3 assists per game and 3.1 per 36 minutes, and his assist percentage ranked 34th among regular bench players. He also is, to be kind, a subpar defender, and he was the third-worst rebounder in the entire NBA.

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There is no secret mitigating math, here, at least beyond all those points. Crawford finished the season ranked 39th among regular bench players in Win Shares, 44th in Player Efficiency Rating, 73rd in Win Shares Per 48 Minutes, 87th in Box Score Plus-Minus, and 92nd in Value Over Replacement Player, where he actually graded out in the negative. The Clippers outscored their opponents while he was on the floor, per NBA.com, but they were actually 6.9 points per 100 possessions better when he wasn't in the game. This year was not like the previous two times that Crawford won the award, in other words. In those, he still scored a lot—over 18 points per game both times, with at least a moderate level of efficiency—but he also contributed to winning in ways that were reflected in some of the more advanced statistics we have available. This year, he didn't.

Crawford basically won because he seems so Sixth-Man-of-the-Year-y; all it really took was a little bit of campaigning from the Doc Rivers and the rest of the Clippers to turn him from someone with little objective claim on the award to the guy that actually won the damn thing—with as many first-place votes as the next two guys combined. There was no great candidate this year, which surely helped: just a bunch of pretty good ones like Andre Iguodala, Enes Kanter, Will Barton, Ed Davis, Tristan Thompson, and Jrue Holiday, among others.

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When you hear them acknowledging your contributions off the bench. Photo by Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports

Among those "others" are a pair of Toronto Raptors that totaled one third-place vote between them, but who would have made for a neat pick if voters were allowed to share their votes between teammates. The Raps had the second-best bench in the NBA this season, behind only the ridiculous San Antonio Spurs, and Cory Joseph and Patrick Patterson—PatPat was the recipient of that third-place vote; shout out to ESPN.com's Ramona Shelburne—were the driving forces behind that success.

Joseph and Patterson shared the court for 1,529 minutes, a period of time during which the Raptors outscored their opponents by 8.9 points per 100 possessions. Of the top 250 two-man pairings in minutes played league-wide, that figure ranks 44th overall, and third among the duos in which both players came off the bench. It's also 7.5 points per 100 possessions better than the Raptors fared in the 2,427 minutes during which Joseph and Patterson were not on the floor together.

A great part of their value comes on the defensive end of the floor, where their work helped lift the Raptors from 23rd in defensive efficiency last season to 11th this year. Both can guard multiple positions, which is a must in this age of small, quick, pick-and-roll heavy lineups; when teams have to switch on defense constantly, on and off the ball, it's vital to have players who can hang with any match-up. In this pair, the Raptors have two of the best. Joseph's ability to defend either guard slot helped unlock one of the NBA's best five-man groupings (Lowry and The Bench). Patterson's quick, light feet helped him contain pick-and-rolls out to the perimeter and seamlessly switch onto smaller players toward the end of possessions.

The team that plays (defense) together, stays together. Photo by Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

On the other side of the ball, the pair made for perfect pick-and-pop partners. Joseph loves attacking the basket when he turns the corner around a screen, which is perfect because Patterson prefers to pop out for open jumpers. Send two guys at a Joseph drive and Patterson knocks down an open trey. Use stay-attached coverage and Joseph beats his man to the rim. There is no right answer. Among the 136 players that averaged at least 25 minutes per game this season, Joseph ranked 10th in drives to the basket per 36 minutes, per the SportVU tracking data on NBA.com, while Patterson's 36.2 percent clip from beyond the arc ranked 10th among power forwards and centers that attempted at least three triples a night.

If you spent your Monday evening watching Game 2 of the Raptors-Pacers series, then you saw the kind of impact Joseph and Patterson could have. The duo combined for 30 points off the bench, and they each played pivotal roles in Toronto's game-closing lineup. Joseph in particular roasted Monta Ellis on hand-offs, ball screens, and baseline backdoor cuts. Slotting Patterson on the perimeter around the pick and rolls that Joseph and Kyle Lowry ran with Jonas Valanciunas and Bismack Biyombo gave the guards much more room to operate than when the team had Luis Scola on the floor.

Spacing benefits, the ability to get to the basket, flexibility on defense—these things make a huge difference in winning games. With respective points per game averages of 8.5 (Joseph) and 6.9 (Patterson), neither player really stood a chance of taking home the hardware; it's sad but true, but that's how it goes. But their impact, both individual and combined, far outstripped that of many other candidates in a year where there was no surefire frontrunner. Maybe it's time for a Sixth-And-Seventh Men of the Year Award.