It seemed that Malik Monk, a former Los Angeles Lakers player currently playing for the Sacramento Kings, could win the first individual award of his career.

However, with an extremely narrow victory in the voting stage, bigman Naz Reid of the Minnesota Timberwolves won the NBA’s Sixth Man of The Year title in 2024, an award honoring the best reserve player of the season.

Malik Monk and Naz Reid had the same number of votes for third place (10 votes) as for second place (39 votes). Here, Reid with 45 first-place votes narrowly won Malik Monk’s 43 votes, officially becoming Sixth Man of The Year.

According to information from the NBA, this is the closest result in the tournament’s history under the current voting format (applied from the 2002-03 season to present).

Naz Reid averaged 13.5 points and 5.2 rebounds per game for the Minnesota Timberwolves, providing important contributions to help the “Wolves” achieve the second-best win-loss record in club history (56-26). .

Reid played a total of 81 matches in the Regular Season, including 67 matches as a substitute and 14 starts to replace injured teammates. Meanwhile, Malik Monk had 100% of his matches on the reserve team, averaging 15.4 points, 5.1 assists and 2.9 rebounds for the Sacramento Kings.

Unfortunately for Malik, he missed the last 3 weeks of the Regular Season due to injury, thereby not being able to improve his “CV” and also being powerless to help Kings advance to the Playoffs.

Naz Reid is only the third player in NBA history who was not selected in the NBA Draft but still became Sixth Man of The Year. In addition, he is the 6th player ever to win the award before turning 25 years old.

As for the Minnesota Timberwolves, this is the third player in the club’s history to win this award. The two previous names were John Starks (1997) and Darrell Armstrong (1999).

“To be mentioned next to excellent reserve players like this, I feel grateful and extremely proud ,” Naz Reid shared with TNT after being announced as 6th Man of The Year.

Besides Naz Reid and Malik Monk, third on the voting list is striker Bobby Portis of Milwaukee Bucks. Behind is shooter Norman Powell of the LA Clippers and shooter Bogdan Bogdanovic from the Atlanta Hawks.

Sixth Man of The Year is the second individual award announced by the NBA this week. Yesterday (April 24), All-Star defender Tyrese Maxey of the Philadelphia 76ers just won the Most Improved Player award.