BATON ROUGE – Former LSU basketball star Naz Reid, who helped the Tigers to a SEC Championship and the NCAA Sweet 16 in 2019, was named the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year and recipient of the John Havlicek Trophy the league announced on Wednesday.
In the NBA, Reid has helped the Timberwolves to the second-best season in franchise history.
Reid won a close vote for the award and became the third undrafted player to win the award for the league’s best reserve.
Reid averaged career highs of 13.5 points and 5.2 rebounds in 81 games, coming off the bench 67 times.
Another LSU product, Shaquille O’Neal, got to announce the winner on the TNT broadcast.
“I kind of joke around with my teammates a little bit, but it’s kind of a saying where I feel like we have to keep the momentum going, anyway,” Reid said in an interview on TNT after the award was announced. “Either we got to have the mentality to come back in the game, or to push the lead forward.”
The Timberwolves had a 56-26 record in 2023-24 to earn the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference. They have a 2-0 lead in their series with the Phoenix Suns that continues on Friday.
For almost a month (March 16 to April 10), Reid had to fill in for injured starter Karl Anthony-Towns with 12 starts, averaging 17.1 points on 45.4 percent shooting during that time.
Reid was undrafted out of LSU in 2019, originally joining the Timberwolves with a two-way contract that summer after a good performance in the NBA summer league. He has become a fan favorite in Minnesota and signed a multiyear contract extension last summer. He had 843 points off the bench this season, second-most in franchise history.
The other undrafted players to win the award, named for the Boston Celtic Hall of Famer, are Johnson Starks (1996-97) and Darrell Armstrong (1999)
Reid came to LSU as a freshman in the 2018-19 season from Asbury Park, New Jersey, where he played at Roselle Catholic High School. The five-star recruit was ranked 18th in the nation in the 247sports composite rankings.
He played in 34 games for LSU in his only season with the Tigers, earning All-SEC Freshman Team and Collegeinsider.com Freshman All-America honors. He was second on the LSU team in scoring at 13.6 points per game and led the team in rebounds at 7.2 points a game. He posted eight double doubles, including seven versus SEC teams.
Associated Press contributed to this story.