Brooklyn Nets: Could Spencer Dinwiddie win the 6th Man of the Year award next season?

Spencer Dinwiddie of the Brooklyn Nets has made leaps and bounds with every passing season, could his next one result in some hardware for his efforts?

Under the guidance of Sean Marks and the recently-departed Trajan Langdon, the Brooklyn Nets have had multiple instances of finding “diamonds in the rough” in the past few seasons. One of their finds was Spencer Dinwiddie, who recently placed 4th in the NBA in Six Man of the Year Voting this past season.

You can’t mention this award without bringing up Lou Williams, for Dinwiddie to win it this upcoming season he’s going to have to surpass the seemingly resident 6MOTY winner. But if Dinwiddie’s career trajectory serves as any indicator, he’s only going to get better.

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Generated 7/22/2019.

The Brooklyn Nets in the eyes of many in the basketball spectrum exceeded pre-season expectations by a country mile. After falling to an 8-18 record at the beginning of the season, playoffs appeared a hopeless dream.

However, they turned their season around—as it’s been well documented—and went 34-22 in their remaining 56 games to appear in the playoffs as the sixth seed.

Spencer Dinwiddie’s play had a significant role in that turnaround, he averaged 20.0 points and 6.0 assists on 46.6 percent shooting during the month of December—which was when the team won 9 of their 12 games following their 8-18 start.

He’s proven he can be a flamethrower off the bench, but he’s also an adept playmaker. In the 2017/18 season, Dinwiddie finished second in the NBA in assist to turnover ratio (4.1)

Last year that number dipped down to 2.1 but that can also be attributed to a right thumb injury he suffered at the beginning of the calendar year and an increase in usage.

He’s an aggressive player, as evident by his 14.1 drives per game—good for 12th in the NBA this season. When you’re that direct with your offense it’s easy to turn the ball over against elite defenses, but that’s not a deterrent in his overall offense dynamic.

He’s a smart ballplayer, he knows how to break down a defense, he closes out games and plays starter like minutes. In games in which Dinwiddie played more than 30 minutes this past season, the Nets went 14-7. In the 14 games he missed, the team went 6-8.

Another noteworthy factor would be Brooklyn’s level of success in the 2019/20 season. Since the beginning of the decade, the averaging winning percentage for a team that possessed the Sixth Man of the Year for that given season was 0.641%—the Nets finished their 18/19 campaign with a 42-40 record (.512%).

But with the additions of Kyrie Irving, DeAndre Jordan, Taurean Prince, Wilson Chandler, David Nwaba, Garrett Temple, and the development of their core pieces (plus, eventually some guy named Kevin Durant), the Nets could potentially near the 50-win plateau.

If that’s the case and Dinwiddie elevates his level of play like he has each of five seasons thus far in the NBA, he very well could be a finalist for the award and could make a surprise appearance at this year’s All-Star Game.

There are plenty of hypotheticals here and he’d have to stay relatively healthy as he did in the 2017/18 season, but it isn’t like I’m writing out of the realm of possibility.

2019/20 will be a very intriguing season for a number of the reasons for the Brooklyn Nets, this just adds another factor into the pot.