Milwaukee Bucks guard Jrue Holiday is the recipient of the Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year award, the NBA announced today. This honor recognizes the player who's deemed the best teammate based on his selfless play, leadership and dedicaton to the team.
This is Holiday's third time winning the Teammate of the Year award, as he also won it last season and in 2019-20. The award has been around for a decade, as it was first handed out in the 2012-13 season.
Unlike the other end-of-season awards, this honor is voted on by NBA players, who choose the winner from a list of 12 finalists (six from each conference) selected by a panel of team executives. Nearly 400 NBA players voted on this award.
Holiday received 57 first-place votes and 1,359 total voting points. Brooklyn Nets wing Mikal Bridges was the runner-up, with 39 first-place votes and 1,190 total voting points.
Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (42 first-place votes, 1,117 total points), New York Knicks guard Derrick Rose (36 first-place votes, 1,097 total points) and Miami Heat forward Udonis Haslem (52 first-place votes, 1,023 total points) rounded out the top-five.
Here are the complete voting results:
The Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year award is named for Jack Twyman and Maurice Stokes, whose storied friendship transcended their Hall-of-Fame accomplishments. Twyman and Stokes were teammates on the Rochester/Cincinnati Royals from 1955-58. In the last game of the 1957-58 regular season, Stokes sustained an injury that led to him falling into a coma days later and becoming permanently paralyzed. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic encephalopathy, a brain injury that damaged his motor-control center. Stokes was supported for the rest of his life by Twyman, who became his legal guardian and advocate.
Twyman helped organize the NBA’s Maurice Stokes Memorial Basketball Game, which raised funds for Stokes’ medical care and, after Stokes’ death in 1970 at age 36, for other players in need. In 2004, after years of lobbying by Twyman, Stokes was enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Twyman, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1983, died in 2012.