John Stockton, the point guard who defended the Utah Jazz during his 19-year professional career (from 1985 to 2003), is the NBA all time regular season assist leader with incredible 15.806 in a 10.5 per game average.
The Jazz great kept astonishing regularity in games played during his career. A true Iron Man, Stockton played every possible game in 17 of his 19 seasons (not counting playoffs); 82 games in 16, and 50 in the lookout 99 season. E only missed 22 games during all those years; 18 caused by an injury in the 97-98 season — that’s right, only 4 missed games in the other 18 seasons!
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Obviously, only his remarkable durability would not be enough to explain his performance in making plays. Several other factors played a significant role in getting to such amazing numbers.
Stockton was a fantastic pass first point guard, the kind of athlete whof first worries at creating chances for his teammates than thinking about his own shot. Despite not being flashy, he had nearly perfect technique, always passing the ball at the ideal moment to his fellow players.
It was also essential having the legendary Karl Malone (Power Forward, third all time NBA leading scorer) as his teammate in 18 of his 19 seasons. Both never had any feuds like other famous duos (Shaq and Kobe, for instance); in fact, they had and still have a fraternal relationship, even off court. Every Point Guard would love to play alongside a big man like The Mailman, capable of scoring with high accuracy in the paint and from the mid range. Because of their complementary abilities, the Stockton-Malone duo dominated the Pick and Roll, arguably the best at such play, that is very hard to defend when perfectly executed. Also, we cannot forget to remember that Malone was also a tireless player, who usually never missed any games.
Therefore, those facts help us get a glimpse of why Stockton had such a record. In order to fully understand the disparity of his numbers compared to other NBA greats, we need to present some mind-blowing stats:
Stockton has a 3.715 assist edge over the second place, Jason Kidd.
If you excluded 5000 assists from the Jazz great, he would still be 4th all time in history; if you do the same with Kidd, he would drop to 19th.
Lebron James, 4º in all time assists, has 10.420; the 64th place, Kenny Anderson, has less than half, 5.196. This 5.224 difference is lower than the 5.386 between Stockton and Lebron.
If you took away the first 3 and last 3 seasons from Stockton, he would still be all time NBA assist leader. Similar result would happen if you did the same to his 6 last seasons.
Finally, if you added up the total assists from each season leader in the last 19 years (remember that Stockton played 19 seasons), you would have 14.757. still inferior to the Jazz Great (15.806).
I don’t rely “only” at those insane numbers to claim what I did in this post’s title. Besides incredible talent and historical durability, a basketball, to reach such heights, also should be lucky to have as a teammate, during his entire career (without ego clashes), one of the greatest scorers in the history of the NBA, who also happens to play in the PF or C position.
Even all of that would probably not be enough, since the current style of play, with more advanced offenses, superior player movement, results in the ball spending less time at the Point Guard hands; the playmaking is greatly shared among all the other athletes. This change is one of the results of the so called “3 point revolution”, represented by Stephen Curry (best PG of his generation), that influenced and still influences the development and the rise of point guards with a score first mentality, both among the Warrior’s legend contemporaries and young talents like Ja Morant and Trae Young
Perhaps the last great old school Point Guard still playing, Chris Paul, in order to reach Stockton’s record, would have to, at age 38, dish out, in his few remaining seasons, mor that 1 third of the total assists he had in his entire career.
Also, let us not forget about the “load management” that rules this era, meaning in order to preserve their starts for the playoffs, coaches don’t play them in several games; rarely a player now plays all the 82 games of the regular season.
Finally, dear readers, after all that, I feel confident to claim that no one will ever break the assists record set by the great John Stockton.
PS: John is also the NBA all-time leader in steals by a wide margin, but that might be the subject of another post…
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