The sixth man is a team's most important reserve, the first player off the bench, valued enough that the league names a Sixth Man of the Year award.
The sixth man is the first substitute, and the title carries real prestige: the NBA's Sixth Man of the Year award, first presented in 1983, honours the best of them. The role demands a specific temperament and skill set. The player must produce starter level impact in reserve minutes, often as the offence's engine for the second unit, while entering games cold and facing opponents who have already found their rhythm.
Great sixth men are often better than the starters they back up, and coaches keep them on the bench deliberately: to stagger stars, to punish opposing reserves, and to guarantee that one creator is always on the floor. Manu Ginobili's years anchoring San Antonio's bench units are the modern standard, and Jamal Crawford and Lou Williams built careers, and three Sixth Man awards in Williams's case, on the role alone.
Eligibility has a clean definition worth knowing for quizzes: a player must come off the bench in more games than they start to qualify for the award. The term now generalizes beyond basketball, but on this site it keeps its precise meaning: first off the bench, by design, and good enough that the design is a compliment.
In use"He accepted the sixth man role and changed the game every time he checked in."