Lou Williams – NBA record holder, who supressed his ego and became a legend

The best sixth man award is not the most coveted in the NBA, but some men have become legends because of it. Jamal Crawford and Lou Williams have won it the most – three times – the latter of whom, thanks to the role as an excellent substitute, ended up in a song by the world-famous rapper Drake.

Although Williams is on the same page as Crawford in terms of awards, it is he who is considered the best sixth man of all time. The American, who hung up his sneakers a little over a year ago, scored 13,396 points by intervening from the bench, more than 2,000 points ahead of the nearest pursuer.

Williams so embraced the role of the sixth man, although he could easily have been a starting five as well. In 1,212 NBA games, he stepped onto the floor just 144 times and the most games he started in a single season was 38.

Williams, who made his NBA debut in 2005, won his three awards in a short period of time: in 2015, 2018 and 2019. At the same time, he was only the third player, after Kevin McHale and Detlef Schrempf, to be crowned the best sixth man in two consecutive seasons.

Although Williams’ abilities would have allowed him to be a starting five – he averaged 22.6 points in his most productive season for the Los Angeles Clippers – he settled for the role of a substitute early in his career.

He realized that if he wanted a long NBA career, he would have to tame his ego and settle for interference from the bench. A career lasting 17 years only confirms this opinion.

Williams was hot from the start

Williams was once asked if he would be interested in being promoted to the starting lineup. “Frankly, I don’t care about it,” he said. “The most important thing for me is that I play a lot in the fourth quarter. I’ve always cared about finishing matches.”

Williams has also joked that he has lost around 100 million US dollars by accepting the role of a substitute.

It is interesting to note that although Williams did not start a game in his first four NBA seasons, he emerged as a starting five for the Philadelphia 76ers in the fall of 2009. He averaged 17.3 points through the first 14 games before being sidelined with a jaw injury.

During the injury break, the 76ers re-hired the legendary Allen Iverson, and the role of Williams, who idolized him, changed. “They told me I’m going to start from the bench,” he recalled on NBA star Paul George’s podcast. ” Because the club thought that it was not easy for Iverson mentally to handle the role of a substitute. I thought to myself: “Damn it! I had gotten in really good shape.” From that moment on, I have been a substitute.”

It’s true, as Williams mentioned in an interview with the NBA website, he needed time to repress his ego and settle into the role. “I thought that if someone wanted to leave me on the bench, I would do everything to prove him wrong. But at one point, being the sixth man became fun.”

Williams has also said that he was the one who made the bench cool. It’s subjective, of course, but along with Crawford, he helped to change the paradigm in which backups were largely stand-ins so the main guys could rest.

Easily able to more or less control what was happening on the court, Williams was a man who could change games by intervening off the bench. He is considered one of the best microwave scorers in the history of the NBA, who was hot as soon as he got on the court and was able to get his team’s derailed offensive engine back on track.

Balances the team

Williams, 185 cm tall, was extremely fast, skilled, and although in defense he often resembled a cone, stopping opponents was not a very important for him. The entire NBA knew this, but if you’re a player who brings solid points off the bench and doesn’t pout about your role, you’re a very valuable player.

Otherwise, a career spanning 17 years is simply not possible.

To be fair, the winners of the best substitute player award have often been ballers who could, or even should, be in the starting five. For example, Bobby Jones, the first winner of the trophy, which has been awarded since 1983, was a much better small forward than Marc Iavaroni, who started matches instead of him.

McHale, who won the award in 1984 and 1985, is an NBA Hall of Famer and one of the best three-point shooters of all time. San Antonio Spurs legend Manu Ginobili has also spent most of his career on the bench, though there’s no doubt head coach Gregg Popovich could have trusted him as a starting five.

Williams perfectly fulfilled the original paradigm of the substitute. Red Auerbach, nine-time NBA champion with the Boston Celtics as a head coach, is considered to have coined the term, who felt that he had enough offensive power in the starting five, but not on the bench.

Thus, good sixth men have always been players who add balance to their team, so that the resting time of the starting five would not cripple the game.

And at the end of the day, it gives players who would otherwise most likely miss out on that status a chance to become legends who aren’t simply remembered for earning their keep in the NBA.

Instead they’d be remembered for being game-changers and perfectly filled an a role that is undesirable for many.