Beginning on Sept. 10, Michael Jordan, among others, will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. When Air Jordan takes his place on the stage, flash bulbs will be popping to commemorate the high-flying, Gatorade-chugging scoring machine who dominated the 1990s. Next to Jordan that day will be a man sitting stoically, lips shut and arms folded -- a man whose place in the Hall deserves far more recognition than it will get. I'm talking about John Stockton.
Let's get the ridiculous statistics out of the way first. Fifteen thousand, eight hundred and six assists: an NBA record that will never be broken, especially in this age of me-first, SportsCenter basketball. Nearly 20,000 points: more than the glamorous Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas or Scottie Pippen scored. 3,265 steals: another NBA record and more than 700 ahead of Jordan, the man with whom Stockton will share the podium in September.
Most impressive to me, though, was the fact that Stockton did all of this with one club, the Utah Jazz, and missed only 22 games over the course of 19 professional seasons. Stockton had about as much court time as O.J. Simpson and yet rarely complained of an injury, got angry at his coach over playing time or even demonstrated any emotion besides unadulterated passion for the game.
Stockton's silence on the court is probably the reason he was named to the All-NBA First Team just twice and was largely regarded as Johnson's playmaking inferior for his years in the league. But with pants shorter than a list of good Britney Spears songs, Stockton was a blur of purple and yellow on the court, weaving in and out of defenders and teaming up with Karl Malone to form the most powerful pick-and-roll tandem in the history of the league. If he wanted, Stockton could probably pass a basketball through a keyhole.
The thing was, Stockton never dunked and yet shot over 50 percent for his career, netting the majority of his points off of high-percentage lay-ups following his patented penetration into the lane. Pass first, shoot second: the stereotypical white guy. Stockton performed it to a tee, defining the point guard position for years to come.
Sure, I'm a product of an age where 360 dunks are regarded as more impressive than back-door cuts, but true basketball to me features bounce passes, lay-ups and lock-down defense. Stockton's baseline screens on hulking 300-pound men freed up Malone for thousands of points, and all you heard was these behemoths whining about how illegal Stockton's play was. But Stockton just shut up and kept on winning.
Although he was occasionally seen as a dirty player by his peers, Stockton was anything but a dirty person. He was the friendly neighbor, the cool dad and the quiet superstar all rolled into one: the epitome of loyalty. Stockton once signed a $5 million per season deal, less than half of what free agent guards were getting, on the condition that his seven year-old son's hockey team would get ice time at the Delta Center. When he and Malone went fishing, Stockton made Malone throw back everything they caught. But that was just the person Stockton was -- always giving, never taking.
Growing up, my basketball skills were about as sharp as an earthworm's. I had more bricks than the Giza Pyramids. Imagine the best dribbler in the world; I was roughly the exact opposite of that. But the two things I could do were pass and play defense, and I wanted to be just like Stockton. He wasn't that flashy player who jumped in an opponent's face after a made basket, nor was he that kid with the Chinese tattoos that probably said something along the lines of "I like to spoon with pandas."
For me, to play basketball was to play it the right way, the John Stockton way. Players like Stockton who master the intangibles rarely get noticed and rarely get commended, but while he may be sitting silently on stage with his arms folded, I'll be at home cheering for this legend.
--
Alex Prewitt is a freshman who has not yet declared a major. He can be reached at Alexander.Prewitt@tufts.edu.
