NBA

Jordan Clarkson’s Sixth Man of the Year award a tribute to men who won it before him

As Jordan Clarkson made history as the first Utah Jazz to ever to win the NBA Sixth Man of the Year award, the Filipino-Amercian swingman said he dedicated the coveted plum to the players he looked up to the most.

In a media availability Tuesday morning Manila time, Clarkson said he would not have been in this position in his young basketball career if it weren’t for the guys like Jamal Crawford, Lou Williams, JR Smith, and Manu Ginobili---all of whom were Sixth Man of the Year awardees in the past.

Incidentally, two of them, Williams and Smith, were his teammates before in the Los Angeles Lakers and Cleveland Cavaliers, respectively.

“It’s been a journey. I’m happy, really excited. It came as a surprise to me but it's paying forward to all the guys that you know, who really won this award before me,” Clarkson said.

“I’m happy one of my teammates, Lou Williams, who was my teammate in the Los Angeles Lakers, really talked to me a lot while I was there as a young kid going through that transition of moving to the bench and stuff like that.”

The award was presented to Clarkson by no less than his Jazz teammate Joe Ingles, who also happened to be in the running for the award.

Clarkson received 65 first-place votes and collected 407 total points from a panel of 100 sportswriters and broadcasters from across the globe. Ingles, meanwhile, finished in second place with 272 points. New York Knicks guard Derrick Rose settled in third place with 77 points.    

The 28-year-old guard, who’s playing his seventh season, averaged a career-high 18.4 points, 4.0 rebounds and 2.5 assists in 26.7 minutes in 68 games he played. Currently, Utah Jazz is in a series with Memphis Grizzlies in the quarterfinals of NBA Playoffs.

But as he savors his first major accolade, he said it would be his way of paying homage to the guys who inspired him to embrace the role of a sixth man.

“So (I’m) learning from them and going through that process of really accepting this role, (it) put me in this place today so I really want to thank them on behalf of myself, my family, and everything,” he said.

“And the Utah Jazz organization who let me be myself, really accepted me, the coach put me in position to be great as well as my teammates, so this is awesome.”

—Bea Micaller/JMB, GMA News