Keldon Johnson was the ultimate backup for the San Antonio Spurs this season.
He played in all 82 games, all off the bench, becoming only the second NBA player in the past decade to do that for any team. He became the first San Antonio player to score 1,000 points as a reserve in a season. And all season long, the Spurs touted him as the best backup in the league.
Voters agreed, and now the Spurs have another award winner.
Johnson was announced Wednesday as the NBA’s sixth man of the year for the 2025-26 season, joining San Antonio’s Manu Ginobili in 2008 as the only players in the storied franchise’s history to win the award. It’s the first individual NBA award for Johnson, who was part of the U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team that won gold at the Tokyo Games in 2021.
“I started for a long time,” Johnson, 26, said on ESPN after he was revealed as the winner. “Now it’s my time to come off the bench. I just continue to analyze the game, come off the bench, go in there and just do my thing.”