Keldon wins Sixth Man

Keldon Johnson won the National Basketball Association’s 2025-26 Sixth Man of the Year award on April 22 after playing all 82 games for San Antonio off the bench. (nba.com) The award goes to the league’s top reserve, and Johnson became only the second Spurs player to win it after Manu Ginóbili in 2007-08. He received 63 first-place votes, ahead of Miami’s Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Denver’s Tim Hardaway Jr. (espn.com) Johnson averaged 13.2 points, 5.4 rebounds and 1.4 assists in 23.3 minutes a game, while shooting 51.9% from the field and 36.3% from 3-point range. He was the only National Basketball Association player this season to appear in every game without a start. (basketball-reference.com) (nba.com) His 1,081 bench points set a Spurs single-season record and passed Ginóbili’s 927 from his own award season. San Antonio said Johnson also led all reserves in Win Shares at 6.4. (nba.com 1) (nba.com 2) The award capped a two-year shift in Johnson’s role. After starting 205 games in his first four seasons, he spent the last two years as a full-time reserve and appeared in 159 games in that span without a start. (espn.com) (nba.com) Johnson said on ESPN that moving to the bench was “probably my best possibility” to help San Antonio, after initially struggling with the change. Victor Wembanyama said last month that Johnson “deserves to be the Sixth Man of the Year.” (nba.com) (espn.com) The timing also fits San Antonio’s turnaround. The Spurs finished 62-20, reached the playoffs for the first time since 2019, and had already seen Wembanyama win Defensive Player of the Year two days earlier. (nba.com 1) (nba.com 2) Johnson’s season put him in a short franchise line, but his case was built on volume and availability as much as scoring bursts. He posted 58 double-digit games as a reserve and 19 games with at least eight rebounds. (nba.com) By the end of the regular season, the player San Antonio once used as a high-volume starter had become the league’s most decorated bench scorer. The award made that role change official. (espn.com)