The Book of Basketball (79 page)

By the time Payton had finished whipping him like a dominatrix, Stockton was thirty-four and heading toward the twilight of his career. Then fate intervened. Magic and Isiah were gone. KJ and Price were fading away. Penny was a blown-out knee waiting to happen. Tim Hardaway tore an ACL and became much easier to defend. Kidd and Marbury
weren’t ready. Kenny Anderson and Damon Stoudamire would never be ready. Rod Strickland and Nick Van Exel were crazy. Mark Jackson and Mookie Blaylock weren’t in his class. Really, who was left?
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And the pace of NBA games had slowed so much that fast breaks were obsolete and every team milked possessions for 18–20 seconds at a time, a godsend of a development for a point guard in his mid-thirties. By dumb luck and sheer attrition, Stockton remained the league’s second-best point guard. When the ’97 Jazz won 64 games and made the Finals, Stockton enjoyed his best playoff numbers in five years (16–4–0, 52 percent FG) against Darrick Martin (first round), Van Exel (second round), Matt Maloney (Western Finals), and Steve Kerr (Finals). When they returned to the Finals in ’98, Stockton made a bunch of memorable crunch-time plays against Maloney (first round), Avery Johnson (second round), Van Exel (Western Finals), and Kerr (Finals).
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So much for the glory days of battling Magic, GP and KJ.

I would argue that Stockton enjoyed the luckiest career of any top-forty guy. He lasted long enough that we forget his Playoffs resume from ’89 to ’96 and remember only his big moments in ’97 and ’98 … you know, when he was lighting up Maloney.
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We marvel at his gaudy assist numbers, forgetting that they came during an era when the criteria for assists inexplicably softened. And we gloss over his good fortune of playing with one of the best coaches ever (Jerry Sloan) and best power forwards ever (Malone, who complemented him perfectly in every respect). Look,
I was there.
He wasn’t better than Isiah, Magic, Payton or even Hardaway and KJ at their peaks. He couldn’t guard anyone for the last half of his career. He didn’t have an extra playoff gear like so many other greats. Had he arrived at a different time, landed on the wrong team or blown out a knee, Stockton just as easily could have been Mark Price. So why the high ranking? Because he wore me down. Even after turning forty, he kept playing
at a fairly high level and putting on a “how to run a basketball team” clinic. There was a crunch-time moment in the 2002 Playoffs with Utah trailing by six and desperately needing a hoop to silence a raucous Sacramento crowd. As Stockton was tearing down the court, I was sitting there thinking, “Pull-up three, he’s going for the pull-up three,” only because I’d seen it so many times. Mike Bibby didn’t know him as well. Thinking Stockton intended to take it coast-to-coast, Bibby started backpedaling at the three-point line … and as soon as Bibby’s momentum started to lean backward, Stockton pulled up and launched one of his trademark “my momentum is taking me forward, but somehow I stopped my body long enough to launch this baby” threes right in Bibby’s mug.

Swish.

Three-point game.

Mike Bibby’s head shaking in disgust.

And I remember thinking, “That’s why I’m gonna miss John Stockton.” Even after seventeen years and counting, you knew him inside and out, knew every one of his moves, knew what he was doing before he even did it and he was still pulling that crap off. Unbelievable. Watching Stockton in his waning years reminded me of a family member or longtime friend who gets you with the same two moves every time, like my uncle Bob, who lived off the same pull-up jumper going to his right for about forty-five years. There’s something to be said for that. Isiah was better at his peak, but would you rather have an A-plus point guard for ten quality years or an A-minus for seventeen years pulling off the same exact shit in 2003 that he pulled in 1987? Interesting debate. I’d still take Isiah, but I had to think about it. As late as 1996? I wouldn’t have thought about it. Stockton wasn’t flashy like Magic or as naturally gifted as Nash. He stood out only because of his short shorts
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and a vague resemblance to David Duchovny. Only Utah fans and basketball nerds truly appreciated him; Stockton’s final few months barely registered a thump against Jordan’s third and final farewell in 2003. Too bad. He should have gotten more credit for being the most fundamentally sound point guard ever, for playing the position selflessly and thoughtfully for an extraordinary length of time. Most points play at
a high level for nine to twelve years; Stockton did it for eighteen and didn’t miss a single game in seventeen of them. Only Nash was better at running high screens. Only Magic was better at going coast-to-coast in big moments. And nobody owned the “we’re up by one, we’re on the road, the crowd’s going bonkers, there’s a minute left, the other team just got a fast break dunk, they have all the momentum, and that’s why I’m bringing it down and dropping a 25-footer on them” sequence quite like Stockton did. He was one of a kind. Boring as hell … but one of a kind.

(One last thought: here’s where you have to love the Level 3/Level 4 debate. Stockton was the defining Level 3 guy for me, but you could easily make the case that his longevity and assist numbers sneak him up a level. See, the Pyramid works! It works, dammit!)

1.
I spent roughly 10,000 hours playing Doc vs. Larry in 1984. If I’d had NBA Live 2009 at the time, Doc vs. Larry wouldn’t have come out of the box. You could say the same about Mikan in 1951. If Dwight Howard had been playing back then, Mikan wouldn’t have come out of the box.

2.
They didn’t even keep rebounding stats until ’51. What the hell was going on back then? It’s amazing they even kept track of points.

3.
I spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out what current celebrity Mikan looked like. The answer? A giant, bespectacled Jason Biggs. I’m glad I’m here.

4.
McHale told Jack McCallum in 1990, “The footwork is important, but my success begins with the premise that I can shoot the ball. That’s where so many big guys get off track right away. Everything is predicated on my defensive guy thinking, ‘If McHale shoots the ball, he’s going to make it.’ … The one thing I know right away is when I’m going to take a jump shot. When the entry pass is in the air, and I feel my guy with just one hand on me, playing off me, there’s no way I am not going to shoot. And there’s no way he’s going to block it.”

5.
I incorporated this move into my own game. Unstoppable. House and I played like a thousand hours of one-on-one and two-on-two in college and he always fell for it. I also had the double jump hook as well.

6.
During an ESPN shoot, I got Paul Pierce to fall for this move at the EA headquarters in Vancouver. He claims he wasn’t trying, but there’s video and everything. I sank combo no. 3 right in the mug of a guy who’d win Finals MVP ten months later. Come on, how many people can say that?

7.
Didn’t help that KC Jones coached every game like it was Game 7 of the Finals. I was rereading
48 Minutes
(the book about a specific ’87 Cavs-Celtics game by Terry Pluto and Bob Ryan) and laughed when I came to the box score at the end: KC played McHale and Bird 51 and 49 minutes respectively in an OT game against a bad team in January. This shit happened all the time. No wonder those guys broke down.

8.
Think of this when you see him limping around on the sideline as Minnesota’s coach.

9.
You know, before Madden lost his fastball and grew twelve-inch-long eyebrow hairs and started to look like a mortician was doing his makeup.

10.
McHale never imagined going pro until his senior year. Here’s what he told McCallum: “I was at a party with some football players and somebody brought in the
Sporting News
that had me rated as the top forward and second-best center in basketball. ‘Hey, you’re going to be a top-five pick,’ someone told me, and I said, ‘Really?’ … I played in all those postseason All-Star games basically for the travel. I had no thoughts of improving myself in the draft or getting more money or anything like that. I remember I picked up the paper and read that Darrell Griffith wasn’t going to play in the All-Star game in Hawaii because he didn’t want to take the chance at getting hurt. And I thought, ‘What’s with this guy? Miss a free trip to Hawaii?’ I went over there, drank piña coladas and beer, and won the MVP.” How could you not like this guy?

11.
I forgot to include Ice and Holmes in my pantheon of Cross-Racial Lookalikes: they even had the same facial hair and body types. The Ice/Holmes parallels are eerie: they both started in 1972, had primes from ’77 to ’83, set a few records, had cool nicknames (“Ice” and “Johnny Wadd”), battled whispers about personal problems, flamed out remarkably fast and were gone by 1986. You could even make a parallel between Ice’s depressing final season on Chicago and Holmes playing a gay sultan. And yes, I know this is the third Holmes-related footnote in the book. Just know that the over/under was 4.5.

12.
Virginia teammate Fatty Taylor gave Gervin his nickname during Ice’s rookie year, marveling at how Ice could score all game without sweating. In Ice’s defense, he only weighed 135 pounds and probably didn’t have any water in his body.

13.
Sam’s per-36-minute numbers in ’59, ’60 and ’61? 20–9–3, 45% FG. For ’62 and ’63? 22–7–4, 47% FG.

14.
They played together on the ’86 Bulls when Ice was three levels beyond washed up.

15.
The NBA Players Association would flip if this happened now. Every Spur was given the same bonus, although the $$$ changed depending on the player. According to
SI
, the Spurs won on opening night and a teammate yelled, “One down, eighty-one to go!” Gervin corrected him: “No, one down, thirty-five to go.”

16.
I’m not sure why anyone speculated about Gervin: he weighed less than any Charlie’s Angel, coasted through certain games, referred to himself in the third person, made way too much money, skipped practices all the time with no explanation, was washed up at thirty-three even though he never suffered a major injury and answered to the nickname “Ice.” I don’t see any red flags.

17.
This quote inexplicably started with “Whereas,” like Ice was answering a question even though he wasn’t. Since he said “Whereas” two other times, I think that was just his vocal tic. Whereas, I don’t know why I’m telling you this.

18.
This came from Curry Kirkpatrick’s
S.I.
feature about Ice. Curry’s talents obscured a meanspirited tendency to make certain NBA players sound like Buckwheat. Like how he included this Bob McAdoo quote in the first paragraph of a ’76 Mac profile: “It be hard not to get buckets in this league. If I be doin’ any less, people think I be doggin’ it.”

19.
Did Jimmy Chitwood steal this line from Sam Jones, or did Sam steal it from Jimmy, because Hickory High’s championship hypothetically happened before Jones played for the Celtics? My head hurts.

20.
Ice paved the way for Rickey Henderson and every other star from future generations who constantly referred to himself in the third person. Bill Simmons loves Ice for this.

21.
Grevey explained later, “If Gervin doesn’t get the ball for a while, he goes into a lull. He stops running and working for it. I was in his chest.” That was the rap on Ice—if you beat him up, knocked him around and hounded him, eventually he’d stop trying as hard.

22.
Kenon sulked after S.A. fans voted Gervin Most Popular Spur in ’77, telling reporters, “This town has Gervinitis. They don’t recognize me enough. I’m the best player in the game.” There’s a reason he wasn’t in Chapter 1.

23.
Starters: Gilmore, Kenon, Doc, Darnell Hillman, Moochie Norris. Sixth man: Ben Wallace. Yes, I had to play Doc at 2 to get everyone in. Sue me.

24.
With Ice on his last legs and the Spurs in a free fall, it’s a shame no ’84 contender traded for him. Imagine the ’84 Finals with Ice instead of Mike McGee. Even would have been a fair trade: McGee averaged 17 MPG and 10 PPG and shot 56% for the ’84 and ’85 Lakers.

25.
During the first season when his contract included win bonuses, Ice dropped 42 on G-State and said afterward, “Yeah, I told you I’d get 40. Only points don’t make me no money. Only W’s. Nothing but W’s. From now on when I get my 40’s I’m gonna make sure that we win, too.”

26.
God forbid there was tape of this one. Oscar and Sam guarding each other in a door-die playoff game and combining for 90 points?

27.
I could only find one “Sam choked” game: Game 4 of the ’63 Finals, with Sam in-bounding the ball in a tie game and three seconds remaining, Jerry West picked off his pass for a buzzer-beating, game-winning layup. Auerbach complained about the timekeeper afterward, but I saw the clip and it seemed legit. That’s the only buzzer-beating steal/layup in Finals history as far as I can tell.