FanHouse's 6th Man of the Year Award

It's trophy time in the NBA, and the FanHouse crew has submitted its ballots. Find out which players deserve to take home the hardware and which ones don't, in our NBA Awards series. First up: Sixth Man of the Year.

The Sixth Man award, as you probably have guessed from its name, is given to the player believed to have the biggest impact for his team coming off the bench. Over the past couple of seasons, the discussion is one that's been dominated by two names -- Manu Ginobili and Leandro Barbosa. This year, however, we have a new group of players in the conversation, and, while the voting was close, we were able to come up with a clear cut choice.

Here's how the voting shook out:

1. Lamar Odom
2. Jason Terry
3. J.R. Smith

Odom received three first place votes, barely edging out Terry -- seemingly the consensus favorite in the media -- who received two first place votes. Terry was, however, the only player to be named on all six ballots.

The final first place vote was cast for Nate Robinson, and Nate Jones explains his reasoning by pointing out simply: "Amazing what this guy is able to do at his size." I have no disagreement there, but I would point out that that's the reason we have a slam dunk contest.

Others receiving votes were Travis Outlaw, Chris Andersen, Antonio McDyess, and even Manu Ginobili.

Terry has the numbers, and has provided an amazing scoring punch off the bench for a Mavericks team that is coming into the playoffs playing some of its best basketball of the season. It's hard to see him not receiving the award from the national media. I went with Odom, however, and not just because (as you may have heard) I tend to lean Lakers around these parts. It's because the previously highly-touted L.A. bench completely fell apart once Odom was forced into the starting lineup, after Andrew Bynum went down with his knee injury.