When the Philadelphia 76ers start winning, Robert Covington will be the sixth man of the year.
The Philadelphia 76ers had a connection to the winner of last year’s Sixth Man of the Year Award. Lou Williams won the award as a player for the Toronto Raptors, but earlier in his career he spent seven seasons with the Sixers.
As the award votes roll in this year, the Sixers will likely have no winners on their team. Compiling a record of 10-72 throughout this season, that’s no surprise. Their closest players lobbying for an award would have been Jerami Grant going for Defensive Player of the Year, or Jahlil Okafor going for Rookie of the Year.
Okafor, after some off court issues and an injury that ended his season about 20 games early, was overshadowed by the incredible seasons of Karl-Anthony Towns and Kristaps Porzingis all season. Even if he did enough on the floor to get the award, no Sixers fan ever expected him to actually get it.
In almost any other year, Okafor would have been much closer in the discussion.
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Moving forward, though, I believe that the Sixers have a lock for an award coming their way, once they start winning some more games. Robert Covington will lock up the Sixth Man of the Year Award within the next three seasons.
RoCo is not a player many casual NBA fans know of, mainly because he plays for the Sixers. After starting his career with the Houston Rockets, he was assigned and recalled to the D-League six times before the Rockets decided to waive him. Sam Hinkie, who was the Sixers general manager at the time, jumped on the opportunity of having RoCo on the team, and signed him.
Since signing him, the former D-League exclusive player has improved a lot. He’s shown that he can be a real NBA player, and was one of those special “Hinkie finds.”
This past season, which was RoCo’s third year in the league and second season playing more than 10 games, Cov averaged 12.8 points, 6.3 rebounds, and 1.4 assists per game. He shot 38.5 percent from the field and 35.3 percent from beyond the arc.
Looking at the last five Sixth Men of the Year, they compare fairly evenly with Covington. RoCo is currently 25 years old, three years younger than the average over the last few years. So assuming he will get this award three seasons from now would be right on track with the age average.
As it stands, compared to the last five winners of the award, RoCo averaged about 4 points less per game, 1.8 rebounds more, and 1.5 assists less than the average of the last five winners. He did all of this while playing 3 minutes less per game.
His field goal percentage was 7 percent worse, and his 3-point percentage was only 1 percent worse.
As more players get brought onto the Philadelphia 76ers — and they should, if they still hope to build a winning team — RoCo will get pushed to the bench. He started 49 games for Philly in each of his last two seasons, but that number will get closer and closer to zero over the next few years. He’s good, but he wouldn’t be a starter on most NBA teams. Cov will ultimately become a bench player, but a great one. He will be a leader on what could be one of the best benches in the NBA.
Covington will lead this great bench — which could also feature Nik Stauskas and Jerami Grant, two players I would also like to see in the running for the same award — and he will be improving in every season. He will get closer and closer to those stats that will easily qualify him for sixth man of the year, and be a frontrunner for the award in a few seasons.
Covington is already playing well for the minutes he is given, especially compared to the past winners of the award. Hopefully Covington is okay with his role as a sixth man, though, and sticks with the team. Hopefully he doesn’t take the route James Harden did after winning the award — wanting to go elsewhere to be a starting player.
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Look out for the Sixers. This time three years from now, many of them may be in the conversation for the awards that are coming out currently for this season.