Iguodala focused on one trophy
Last spring, about a year after he was named 2015 NBA Finals MVP, Andre Iguodala found the award sitting in a bag in the corner of one of his spare bedrooms.
“Up until that point,” Iguodala recalled, “I didn’t even know where it was.”
A budding entrepreneur, Iguodala has long prioritized group goals over individual accolades. Now, with voting closed for the league’s major regular-season awards, the Warriors’ forward hardly cares that he is in the running for his first career Sixth Man of the Year Award.
How he feels about the potential honor doesn’t change an important reality, however:Were he to win, Iguodala would help change how the award for the NBA’s top reserve is viewed. The 33-yearold plus-minus master is a far cry from the sharpshooting guards who typically win that award.
Teammate Draymond Green said of the voters,
“I think it should be changed, but that’s just my opinion. If Andre wins Sixth Man of the Year, it’s my opinion that they finally figured it out.”
After Golden State lost two of its first three games in the 2015 NBA Finals to Cleveland, head coach Steve Kerr put Iguodala in the starting lineup in place of center Andrew Bogut. The Warriors won out as Iguodala helped hold LeBron James to 39.8 percent shooting for the series.
Fresh off a 25-point outburst in the Warriors’ Game 6 victory, Iguodala beat out James and Stephen Curry for Finals MVP. It was the giddy reaction of Iguodala’s then-8-year-old son, not what the award represented, that most resonated with him.
Three months later, at Golden State’s annual Media Day, reporters wanted to know: Would a shot at Sixth Man of the Year fuel Iguodala as he prepared to return to the bench? Typically eager not to give media members the sound bite they’re seeking, he said that he wasn’t “a fan” of the award before comparing it to affirmative action.
His disdain of the accolade didn’t keep him from finishing second in Sixth Man of the Year voting last year, behind the Clippers’ Jamal Crawford. Iguodala was the unquestioned leader of a second unit that was foundational to a Warriors team that won a league-record 73 games. Crawford — though playing for the lesser club and far more one-dimensional — averaged more than twice as many points per game as Iguodala.
With Kevin Durant in the fold this season, Iguodala became even more of a complementary player. Unlike the previous two years, when Iguodala and Shaun Livingston were free to pace the second unit, Kerr began playing at least two of his three primary scorers at all times.
It wasn’t until Durant missed 19 games with a left knee injury toward the end of the regular season that Iguodala began to actively look for his shot. With Durant sidelined the entire month of March, Iguodala averaged 12 points per game on 59.4 percent shooting.
The scoring uptick made analysts focus more on him. What they found was that, whether or not he needed to shoulder much of an offensive load, Iguodala’s defense did not falter.
With 262 assists, 76 steals and 58 turnovers, he finished the regular season No. 1 in assists per turnover (4.50) and No. 7 among players who played at least 70 games in steals per turnover (1.31). His plus-minus average of 6.9 topped all NBA reserves who have played at least 50 games. A versatile defender, Iguodala also regularly guarded opponents’ top scorers.
The question is whether voters will value those traits over scoring totals. Though Iguodala averaged 7.6 points per game in the regular season on a career-best 52.8 percent shooting, fellow Sixth Man of the Year candidates Lou Williams and Eric Gordon averaged 17.5 and 16.2 points, respectively.
“Andre brings a lot to the table, kind of like Draymond does,” Warriors acting head coach Mike Brown said. “One of them is leadership. Another one is just the ability to communicate defensively, get guys in the right spot on the back line of our defense. You couple those things that don’t add up to any sort of statistical categories at all, then you add what he does on the floor — to me, he’s right there for that award.”
The 2017 Sixth Man of the Year will be announced June 26. By that point, Iguodala hopes to have a piece of hardware that he cares about much more: the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy.
“I’m trying to get something else, so I’m not even thinking about Sixth Man of the Year,” Iguodala said. “Everyone plays a role. Whether or not you get an award for it shouldn’t change the way you go about it.”