Warriors beat:
Iguodala making run at Sixth Man award.
Andre Iguodala has stepped up since Kevin Durant went down.
In fact, he’s played so brilliantly that he’s making a late push for the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year Award.
At least that’s the opinion of Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, who made a lengthy pregame pitch Friday for voters to look beyond Iguodala’s ho-hum numbers and understand his impact.
Iguodala is averaging 7.4 points, 4 rebounds and 3.4 assists a game. Since Durant was sidelined, in 13 games Iguodala has averaged 12 points, shot 59.4 percent from the field and continued his lockdown defense. He also leads the league in assist-toturnover ratio (4.68-1).
“I am kind of intrigued by the Sixth Man of the Year Award because it seems like it should just say highest-scoring-playeroff the-bench award,” Kerr said. “But it depends on how people look at it. But if you want to look at the best sixth man in the game in terms of impact and winning, there’s no way anybody is better than Andre.”
Iguodala’s competition for the sixth-man award includes two players he faced Friday: Houston’s Eric Gordon (16.3 points per game) and Lou Williams (17.7).
“People are going to look at the stats and go, ‘Well, (Iguodala is) averaging (seven points) and they’re going to find someone who averages 17 and say ‘Oh, we’ve got to vote for that guy,’ ” Kerr said. “But for those of you with votes, I would remind you this game is about a lot more than just scoring.” Nod to D’Antoni: Kerr didn’t exactly stump for Houston’s Mike D’Antoni to win the Coach of the Year Award, but he did predict he would receive the honor.
The Rockets have a 51-24 record in D’Antoni’s first season after sporting a 41-41 record last year under J.B. Bickerstaff. Kerr was the Suns’ general manager in 2007-08 in D’Antoni’s final season as Phoenix’s head coach. D’Antoni followed that up with three-plus seasons as the Knicks’ head coach and most of two seasons as the Lakers’ head man.
“I think Mike will probably get it,” Kerr said. “I just think what he’s done with that team, the way they built the offense around James (Harden), they added personnel that made a lot of sense. He and (GM) Daryl (Morey) worked together last summer and did a great job kind of figuring out the direction they wanted to go. It’s clicked. It’s worked.” McCaw out: Guard Patrick McCaw was sidelined with leg cramps and replaced in the starting lineup by Matt Barnes.
Barnes started ahead of a healthy McCaw in the Warriors’ previous game, a 110-98 win in San Antonio on Wednesday in which McCaw played just 52 seconds. However, Kerr said Friday that McCaw would start before the team announced shortly before tip-off that he wouldn’t play.