Over the lifetime of the franchise, quite a few Cavaliers have taken home quite a bit of hardware.

The Cavs have had two Rookies of the Year, 16 All-Stars, three All-NBA performers, three J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award winners, a pair of Three-Point Shootout champs and a guy who’s on a few of these lists as well as twice being named the league’s Most Valuable Player as a Cavalier – LeBron James.

But there are a few accolades that’ve eluded the Wine and Gold over the years. And one of those is the NBA’s Sixth Man Award – which no Cavalier has ever won since its inception in 1982-83.

Philadelphia’s Bobby Jones was the first winner of the Sixth Man Award, with the Clippers’ Jamal Crawford winning it most recently. Crawford – who also won it with Atlanta in 2009-10 – is one of only four players to be named the league’s top reserve twice, joining Kevin McHale, Ricky Pierce and Detlef Schrempf.

Crawford, who’s played for six teams over the course of his 14-year career after originally being drafted by the Cavaliers in 2000, is well on his way to making history this year, once again leading all reserves in scoring at 16.2 ppg.

It’s not that the Cavaliers haven’t had some rock-solid sixth men over the years. Hot Rod Williams was one of the most effective reserves in franchise history with Lenny Wilkens’ squads of the late-80s and early-90s. In the 1989-90 season, Hot Rod averaged 16.8 ppg despite starting just 29 of Cleveland’s 82 games that year. Over a five year span, Williams played in 354 games but started just 78 – averaging 12.6 ppg in that time.

Hot Rod is the gold standard for bench players over the course of the franchise’s four-decade history. But Cleveland’s had some solid sixth (and seventh) men over the years, including John Battle, Ben Poquette, Earl Boykins, Phil Hubbard, Craig Ehlo, Daniel Gibson, Steve Kerr and Edgar Jones. And the Cavs have a pair of former Sixth Man winners – J.R. Smith (2012-13), Mike Miller (2005-06) – on their current roster.

This year, Jamal Crawford has the inside edge on an unprecedented third Sixth Man Award – with Boston’s Isaiah Thomas, Chicago’s Taj Gibson and the Cavaliers’ Tristan Thompson right in the mix.

The odds are against Tristan taking home the hardware. For starters, it’s not an award big men usually receive. Bigs don’t come off the bench with a scoring mentality, especially in Thompson’s case, on a team already loaded with advanced offensive weaponry. Guys like Crawford and Thomas are required to score when they enter the ballgame.

But while Thompson doesn’t score like the guards who’ve hoarded the Award in recent years, he does dominate the boards more than any reserve in the league this year.

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In 2014-15, Tristan has led the Cavaliers in rebounding on 23 occasions and in blocked shots 21 times. In 61 games off the bench, Thompson leads all NBA reserves in offensive rebounds per game (3.2) and total rebounds (458) and is second in rebounds per game (7.5). His seven double-doubles off the bench are tied for tops in the league.

Overall, Tristan is 4th in the league in total offensive rebounds (257) and is 5th in offensive boards per game (3.4). On the season, the former Longhorn is averaging 8.5 points on a career-best .547 shooting to go with 8.0 rebounds per contest. And of course, the Wine and Gold’s ironman hasn’t missed a single game in the previous 280 outings.

And Thompson has done some of his best work against the toughest competition. He returned home to Toronto to notch 21 points and 14 boards – nine offensive – in an overtime win over Jonas Valanciunas and the Raptors, becoming the first player since Ben Poquette in 1985 to register numbers like those off the bench.

On Halloween night in Chicago, Tristan became the first bench player in Cavs history to grab 12 offensive rebounds off the bench – part of his 16-point, 13-rebound effort against Pau Gasol and the Bulls. And just last week, going against Pau’s brother Marc (along with Zach Randolph), Tristan came off the bench to lead both teams with 11 boards as the Cavs crushed the Grizzlies at the Grindhouse.

Once the squad’s Achilles’ heel, the Cavaliers bench has been as good as the rest of the squad since mid-January. Matthew Dellavedova brings his unique style of tenacity on both ends, Iman Shumpert has been a godsend on the defensive end and James Jones has been ready to rumble every time his number is called.

But the man in the middle off Cleveland’s bench has been productive, durable and consistent all season. He might not win the Sixth Man Award when the regular season wraps up, but he and his teammates have their eyes set on a bigger piece of hardware anyway.