CLEVELAND – NBA veteran and current Memphis Grizzlies guard Vince Carter has been selected as the 2015-16 Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year Award winner, the NBA announced Wednesday.
 
Carter was chosen from a vote of 300 current NBA players. The award recognizes the player deemed the best teammate based on selfless play, leadership on and off the court as a mentor or role model, plus commitment and dedication to the team.
 
"As you wind down and become a veteran— not an older player, but I'd like to say a veteran that's well-seasoned — you want to help the next generation," Carter said during his acceptance press conference. "And that's just something that comes naturally to me. Something I enjoy doing, and it's just an honor to just be recognized for that, because it's not something that I do for recognition. It's something I want to do to help younger players kind of fulfill their dream and kind of really just put their path together who they want to become, first of all."
 
Minnesota's Kevin Garnett and Miami's Chris Bosh finished second and third, respectively.
 
Carter is the fourth winner of the Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year Award. He joins Detroit's Chauncey Billups (2012-13), Miami's Shane Battier (2013-14) and San Antonio's Tim Duncan (2014-15) as winners.
 
The award is named after Jack Twyman and Saint Francis U legend Maurice Stokes, former teammates with the Rochester/Cincinnati Royals. After Stokes suffered an in-game injury that led to his paralysis, Twyman became his legal guardian for the rest of Stokes' life. Both men are members of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
 
To learn more about the friendship between the two men, click here for SFU professor Dr. Pat Farabaugh's book, An Unbreakable Bond: The Brotherhood of Maurice Stokes and Jack Twyman.