SALT LAKE CITY — It's NBA awards season, and players like Steph Curry, Kawhi Leonard, Jamal Crawford, and C.J. McCollum are getting awards for their excellent play. But what about the players at the other end of the scale? When will they get the recognition they deserve?

To fix this problem, we created the "Salties." Essentially, these are opposite awards in each of the NBA's six major award categories. We'll announce the nominees, their resumes, and then a winner.

For these awards, I put a lot of emphasis towards playing major minutes: sure, there are worse players in the league who didn't get to play, but that means we didn't get to witness much of their poor basketball glory. I also put a lot of emphasis on shot-missing: every possession is critical, and wasting it by missing a bad shot isn't helping anyone.

Let's get started.

Most Declined Player

Terrence Jones was a major contributor to the Houston Rockets in the 2014-15 season. His inside-out game and solid defense inside made him a legitimately excellent role player. And he only seemed likely to improve: he was just 23, a first-round pick out of the University of Kentucky. Well, this season, he cratered. He shot just 31 percent from 3 and 45 percent overall, stopped rebounding, turned the ball over more, and just did everything worse. He ended up dead last in ESPN's RPM.

Marco Belinelli was a 22-minute per game player for the San Antonio Spurs in 2014-15, taking and making a pretty good percentage of his 3-point shots. In 2015-16, the Sacramento Kings cleared roster and salary space for Belinelli by trading away Nik Stauskas, and then he shot just 30 percent from 3 while making over $6 million per season. Yikes.

Ty Lawson was third in the NBA in assists in the 2014-15 season, putting up 9.6 per contest. His speed also gave him over 15 points per game, and he looked to have developed into a pretty difficult to deal with NBA starting point guard. Then, after two DUIs in 2015, Lawson's production cratered for the Houston Rockets. He put up just a 8.9 PER after his 18.5 number a season ago. He didn't shoot well, he didn't pass well, and somehow turned the ball over more frequently despite having it in his hands less often. He found his way to the Pacers during the season, where he's now put up a 2.3 PER in the playoffs.

Winner: Ty Lawson

Worst Rookie of the Year

Emmanuel Mudiay, by virtue of being the seventh pick and Lawson's heir for a young team, was able to make mistakes that most NBA players wouldn't have had the chance at. Shooting 36 percent from the field and 31 percent from 3 is bad, especially on his number of attempts. He ended up with the worst Win Shares total in the league: -2.1. Second place was miles away: -0.4.

Rashad Vaughn, the 17th pick in last year's draft, played over 1,000 minutes for the Milwaukee Bucks. He shot 30.6 percent. He shot 34 percent from within 3 feet of the basket. I don't need to tell you that that's a pretty poor success rate on layups. In fact, according to Bucks fan blog Brew Hoop, no rookie in NBA history has played at least 1,000 minutes while compiling a lower player efficiency rating than Vaughn's mark of 4.2.

Marcelo Huertas stepped into the NBA at the ripe old age of 32 and was pretty obviously bad at it right away. He shot 26 percent from 3, and fans at away arenas across the league mistook him for a trainer. He did give us this, though:

Kelly Oubre told the media at his draft workout in Salt Lake City that he feels he can become "as good as or better than" James Harden, Kawhi Leonard, and Jimmy Butler. I was doubtful. But in his rookie season, he wasn't even as good as Garrett Temple for the Washington Wizards, putting up a 8.2 PER.

Winner: Rashad Vaughn

Worst Starter of the Year

Dante Cunningham somehow started 46 games for the New Orleans Pelicans, playing 73 percent of his minutes at the small forward position. He is definitely not a small forward. His 8.6 PER is bad.

Tayshaun Prince started 44 games for the Minnesota Timberwolves. Prince is 35, cannot hit a 3-point shot (well, not from the NBA line), and was starting over Zach Lavine, who is much more interesting and much more important to the Timberwolves' future than Prince.

P.J. Hairston started 43 games for the Charlotte Hornets, put up a 7.3 PER, and then was traded to the Memphis Grizzlies. There, he started nine more games, played even worse, and eventually was so bad that Memphis had to sign random D-League players who people in NBA front offices had never heard of to avoid giving Hairston minutes. This is a second-year player, a first round pick in 2014, who really just should be better than this.

Winner: P.J. Hairston

Worst Coach of the Year

Byron Scott is a nightmare for Lakers fans. Sure, he dedicated this season to the retirement of Kobe Bryant. That decision is strange, though not an indefensible one. But that didn't mean that he had to undermine his rookie point guard D'Angelo Russell at every turn, even declining to tell Russell why he was benched for wide swaths of the season. His Xs and Os are a complete horror show on both ends of the floor. The Lakers ended up with the fewest wins in franchise history. Somehow, they may still not fire him.

Alvin Gentry took a team that had won 45 games the year before, had a 22-year-old legitimate superstar in Anthony Davis, and confused them. They won just 30 games, and the offense (Gentry's supposed speciality) went from 8th to 18th in the league. Significant, significant asterisk placed here for the injuries New Orleans faced all season long.

Kurt Rambis only coached 28 games for the New York Knicks, but in doing so reminded everyone why he's considered one of the worst coaches of the decade by some observers. He went 9-19 with the Knicks and decided that it would be a good idea to play Porzingis more at the SF position, where his best assets are minimized. He's holding a camp for Knicks players to learn more about the Triangle next week, I'm sure everyone on the roster is very excited about that.

Winner: Byron Scott

Worst Defensive Player of the Year

Kobe Bryant played his final season, but didn't play much on the defensive end, saving his energy for the other side of the floor. The Lakers were 30th in the league defensively, and he was a big reason why: he'd be easily screened off, or just fall asleep off-ball for easy backdoor scores. He's earned the right, I guess, but Kobe's defense was not good this season at all.

Rajon Rondo signed a one-year deal with the Sacramento Kings, and successfully showed off what he has to offer on offense, leading the league in assists. On defense, he tried for exactly one screen per possession, but if you ran him through two, he'd just stop caring in the middle of the play. This was phenomenally useful for all of the Kings' opponents.

Enes Kanter has now had the league's worst defense at the center position for the last three years running by ESPN's RPM stat. Before that, the stat didn't exist. But we can also look at the Jazz's monster change since trading Kanter, moving from the league's worst defensive teams to one of its elite, as evidence of Kanter's deficiencies. Kanter just plays off-balance, making mistakes as he sometimes wildly pantomimes defense at the wrong area of the floor.

Winner: Enes Kanter

Least Valuable Player

Rashad Vaughn, Emmanuel Mudiay, and P.J. Hairston had their resumes already listed. I feel somewhat bad for putting rookies into the LVP discussion, but, well, the stats support it. Miss fewer shots next year, young guys.

Kobe Bryant has already had his defense picked apart, but his offense this year was very bad as well, 60-point game aside. Kobe took 17 shots per game and made only 6 of them on average, good for 35 percent. He also stopped rebounding and passing the ball, even by his standards. It all added up to the second-worst Win Shares total in the league, behind Mudiay.

The winner is P.J. Hairston. He just played so many minutes and played so poorly. The Grizzlies had 28 players on their roster at some point this season, most in NBA history, due to their tremendous injuries, and still preferred to DNP Hairston by the end. Yikes.

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