Well the "Stockton is the best point guard ever" knuckleheads are out in force.
While Stockton is definitely one of the fifteen or twenty best players in NBA history, it is absurd to say he's the best point guard. That title belongs to Magic Johnson or Oscar Robertson (if you decide to count Oscar as a point guard). Those who say, "He's the all-time leader in assists and steals so that makes him the best" are intellectually dishonest. You are purposely selecting statistics to bolster your argument. If you cared about the facts, you'd also mention that Stockton is the second all-time leader in turnovers! You'd also note that Magic has a higher assists-per-game average. Magic didn't play anywhere near as long a Stockton so the assist totals aren't close.
But knuckleheads are on both sides.
Those of you who bash Stockton because he never won a championship don't get it. Athletes who play team sports should not be judged by how many championships they've won (or didn't win as the case may be). That's unfair and it doesn't say anything about individual greatness. Basketball is a team game and it takes a team to win it all. There are many factors as to why some great players never won it all: Lack of great players around them, level of competition, unsupportive ownership/management, injuries, etc. Not all of those applied to Stockton, of course, but you get my point. Team championships do not automatically equal individual greatness.
One idiotic myth perpetuated by Jazz fans--most of whom are complete morons in my experience--is that Stockton is the best pure point guard in NBA history. What nonsense. The "pure" tag is used to bring Magic and Oscar down while raising Stockton up. It's stupid. Stockton cannot compete for best point guard ever if all things are equal so Magic and the Big O must be brought down by applying the pure label. Look, Stockton fanatics, it's no insult that Stockton is the third best point guard in league history. Move along home, morons.
Stockton is the third best point guard in league history. And that's okay.
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2 comments:
If Stockton is not the best (an honor that I think belong to Magic Johnson), he's certainly not far from the top. He's in the top 3 on rankopedia.com
If you only would look at stockton's best years in stats versus magic's. stockton had like 17 points fourteen assists and three steal, where magic had about 20 points thirteen assists and two steals. Cant you tell who is better?
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