Collin Sexton is the only Los Angeles Lakers player sitting near the top of the Sixth Man of the Year market, and the number most likely to decide whether he stays there is not his scoring average but the Lakers’ win total.
In addition, a case had been for Sandro Mamukelashvili. The gap between the forward and the market’s pick is a useful way into the Lakers’ bench, because recent history suggests the award will turn on something neither player fully controls.
Sexton is the only Laker in the top 15 for odds for 6MOY. I was responding to hot takes and making case for Mamu.
— Jovan Buha (@jovanbuha) September 20, 2026
What the Sixth Man of the Year odds look like
At BetMGM, San Antonio guard Dylan Harper opened as the favorite at +700, a price the sportsbook equates to an implied probability of 12.5 percent. BetMGM writer Shane Thurston is picking Oklahoma City’s Ajay Mitchell instead, which means the favorite and the analyst’s pick both come off the bench for the two teams carrying the league’s highest win totals.
Thurston’s write-up does not name a current Laker as a contender, and his list of eight franchises worth monitoring for the award leaves Los Angeles off. The only Lakers player on BetMGM’s list of past winners, which runs back to the award’s first season in 1982-83, is Lamar Odom in 2010-11.
The 52-win bar
Thurston’s reasoning is the part that matters for Sexton. He wrote that the last six winners all played for teams that finished with at least 52 victories, and the voting pattern he describes favors a reserve’s role on a contender over raw scoring off the bench.
Last season was the clearest example. Keldon Johnson won the award while averaging 13.2 points, 5.4 rebounds and 1.4 assists per game for a Spurs team that won 62 games, and Miami’s Jaime Jaquez Jr. finished second despite bigger numbers on a 43-win Heat team that did not get out of the Play-In Tournament.
Thurston attributed the result to the gap in team success. The season before followed the same script.
Payton Pritchard won while averaging 14.3 points per game for a 61-win Boston team, finishing ahead of Detroit’s Malik Beasley even though Beasley scored more, and the two winners before him, Naz Reid and Malcolm Brogdon, came from teams that won 56 and 57 games.
Johnson also opened last season at +6000, which is the encouraging half of the precedent for any long shot, but the other half is a problem for Sexton because of where the Lakers are lined.
BetMGM has the Lakers’ win total at 46.5, with the under slightly favored at -115 and Thurston picking the under. That line is tied for the 11th highest in the league and ranks sixth in the Western Conference, and only three teams are lined above the 52-win mark: Oklahoma City at 62.5, San Antonio at 59.5 and New York at 52.5.
The five Western teams ahead of the Lakers are Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Denver at 49.5, Minnesota at 48.5 and Houston at 47.5, which means even the conference’s second tier is not lined at the threshold the last six winners reached.
Los Angeles would have to beat its number by more than five wins to put a reserve in the company of the last six winners. The Lakers did win 53 games last season, but that team had LeBron James, and the market is pricing this roster as a different group.
Why Sexton is the Lakers’ best candidate
Sexton’s profile is a familiar one for the award. He split last season between Charlotte and Chicago and averaged 15.4 points, 3.3 assists and 2.3 rebounds in 23.7 minutes per game across 68 appearances, shooting 48.5 percent from the field and 40.1 percent from 3-point range.
He started 22 of those games and came off the bench in the other 46, and his scoring rose to 17.5 points per game over 26 games after a February trade sent him to the Bulls. For his career he has averaged 18.3 points per game across 475 games, with a high of 24.3 points per game for Cleveland in 2020-21, so the Lakers are getting a former lead scorer who has already spent a full season living on a reserve’s minutes.
The Lakers landed him on July 1, when ESPN’s Shams Charania reported a two-year, $19 million agreement and added that the deal includes a player option. He projects as the first guard off the bench behind Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves, which is the role that produces Sixth Man candidates when the team around it wins.
Free agent Collin Sexton has agreed to a two-year, $19 million deal with the Los Angeles Lakers, sources tell ESPN. pic.twitter.com/S2MBPxTSH4
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) July 1, 2026
What his career has lacked is winning. Sexton has gone eight NBA seasons without a playoff appearance, so he has never been the kind of candidate the recent voting pattern rewards.
He has at least sounded comfortable with his place in the group. In a team-produced clip that the NBA’s official account shared Saturday, Sexton praised the way Reaves has carried himself in offseason workouts.
"Each and every day when he's in the gym, he's ready to work. No complaints out of him, he's one of the leaders on the team."@CollinSexton02 is impressed by Austin Reaves' leadership & looks forward to playing alongside him in LA 🌴
(via: @Lakers)pic.twitter.com/GF2tNNh0zQ
— NBA (@NBA) September 19, 2026
“Each and every day when he’s in the gym, he’s ready to work,” said Sexton. “No complaints out of him, he’s one of the leaders on the team.”
The Mamukelashvili question
Preferences for Mamukelashvili has a paper trail of its own. The big man finished 10th in last season’s Sixth Man voting with three points while playing for Toronto, which makes him the only player on the current Lakers roster who appeared on a ballot.
The complication is that Mamukelashvili has also been discussed as an option for the open fifth starting spot, alongside wings such as Ziaire Williams and Matisse Thybulle. The award goes to players who come off the bench in more games than they start, so a starting job would end his candidacy and leave Sexton as the clear focal point of the second unit.
If both stay in reserve roles, they would be drawing from the same pool of bench minutes and shots, and both would still be subject to the same team-level ceiling.
What has to happen for Sexton
The path is narrow but easy to describe. The Lakers would need to outperform a 46.5-win line by more than five games, Sexton would need to hold a scoring role close to what he had in Chicago while sharing the floor with two high-usage guards, and he would need to remain a reserve even if injuries to Doncic or Reaves push him into the starting lineup for stretches, as happened 22 times with his two teams last season.
None of that is outlandish, and Johnson’s +6000 price a year ago is a reminder that the market’s September order rarely survives the season. BetMGM counted eight different favorites at various points of last season’s race.
For now, the most useful way to read Sexton’s spot on the board is as a proxy for the Lakers themselves. If the front office adds another starter or the new group simply wins more than the books expect, the only Laker in the Sixth Man conversation will have a real case, and if Los Angeles finishes near its number, recent history says the award will go to a reserve on a team with more wins.
