The title says it all.
via: the Internet.
I remember watching this live, on an 11" TV in Canada instead of studying for finals.
Where were you and what did you do right after?
There's so much one can say about Utah Jazz legend John Stockton. The more and more you look at his stats the more and more wonder and appreciation you gain for him, and his game. I grew up watching him play. I was in medical school when he was still schooling Steve Nash in the NBA Playoffs. I didn't look at advanced statistics back then, but I understand them now. And, oh my, John Stockton was amazing.
He has a career offensive rating of 116 . . . in the playoffs. In the regular season it's 121. He played in 1504 games, and 47764 total regular season minutes. That rating is amazing. Everyone (wrongly) liked Kevin Johnson better (everyone outside of Jazz fans that is), but KJ's last playoff series was when he was 33 years old, and his Off/Def rating split then was 75 off / 104 defense. When John was 39, his playoff Off/Def rating split was 120 off / 98 def.
John came into the league shooting 18.2 3pt%, and finished it with career averages of 38.4 3pt%. As a guard, one with nearly 14,000 FGA (or half a metric kobe), he has a career 51.5fg%. He shot over 50.0 fg% in 12 of his 19 seasons. In 6 other seasons he shot between 48.2 fg% and 49.9 fg%.
Steve Nash is a superior free throw shooter and three point threat than John was, but Nash has only gone over 50.0 fg% 7 times. John did it 12 times. And he only has 3 seasons going between 48%-50%, to John's 6. Nash is a better shooter (career 1.35 pps), but I'd say that on any given shot John was a better maker (career 1.44 pps). But with John it was really about setting up his team mates. He made other guys better, he was the captain of a team that got to the NBA FINALS while starting Adam Keefe, and playing him 25.6 mpg. Seriously, that's hard mode right there. Bravo for beating those late 90's Houston Rockets, LA Lakers, Seattle Supersonics, and San Antonio Spurs teams while starting Keefe, and keeping him on the floor for more minutes than the Jazz are currently playing Derrick Favors right now.
Here are John's apg numbers from his first season starting (started 79 of 82 games), and the following decade:
Magic Johnson had 9 seasons in a row of 10+ apg. Oscar Robertson 4. Isiah Thomas 4. Kevin Johnson 4. Steve Nash 4 years in a row. Chris Paul 3. Jason Kidd did it twice with a whopping 2 years in a row. Tim Hardaway 2 years in a row. Mark Jackson two years in a row as well. Bob Cousy never averaged 10 apg for a season, in any of his years playing the game. John did it for an entire decade in a row. And to think . . . had the Jazz not held John back by playing him off the bench for his first three seasons in the league that monumental number could be even bigger!
But the best trivia about John Stockton is simply this:
No, not here, over there! See it yet? No?
No, of course I'm not trying to change the subject by distracting you all with a picture from a long time ago . . .whatever would give you that idea . . .
. . . because your fanbase votes in Los Angeles Lakers' A.C. Green over the Utah Jazz' Karl Malone to be an NBA All-Star starter.
Democracy is a crazy thing, specifically when it comes to voting. It enforces the idea of universal equality (for all people who have their vote still), and makes it fair by being a simple thing of counting votes (right Florida?). That said, not all people who vote know as much as every other person who votes. Sometimes a lot of people end up voting for ‘their guy’ vs. ‘the RIGHT guy’. This is most clear when it comes to voting for the NBA All-Star game. You don’t have to take my word for it, ask Shaquille O’Neal what he thinks of all those Yao Ming votes back during Shaq’s prime when he was still better than the Rockets center. But back before Lakers players were getting the wrong end of the stick there was the 1990 NBA All-Star game vote fiasco. Here’s the actual vote tally for the Western Conference Forwards list:
| Western Conf Forwards | Fan Votes | Season PER |
| James Worthy | 163,053 | 19.8 |
| A.C. Green | 160,788 | 14.7 |
| Karl Malone | 159,562 | 27.2 |
| Xavier McDaniel | 158,759 | 17.9 |
| Kelly Tripucka | 77,832 | 13.6 |
| Chris Mullin | 72,817 | 22.7 |
| Derrick McKey | 67,430 | 15.6 |
| Thurl Bailey | 64,102 | 13.4 |
| Tom Chambers | 64,028 | 20.9 |
| Danny Manning | 58,593 | 16.3 |
An Alternative title could be "A list of forwards all better than A.C. Green, and A.C. Green" list.
There are many ways to be angry about this in the "right" way. The most obvious one, if you were just an NBA fan and not a Utah Jazz fan, would be to state the obvious.
"Hey, wasn’t Karl Malone the MVP of the All-Star game LAST YEAR?" – Joe Average Fan
The answer is, obviously, yes.
28 points (12/17 shooting), 9 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, all in 26 minutes to help the West win 143-134 in the Houston Astrodome.
And it’s not like Karl was having a horrible season in 1989-1990 – or that A.C. Green was having a great one. It’s just flat out an example (of thousands in the sporting world) where the more deserving guy got shafted by dumb people stuffing the ballot boxes for their guy – no matter how badly the other guy was better.
After the jump – a lot of evidence to state the glaringly obvious: two time MVP, two time Gold Medalist, and Hall of Fame inductee Karl Malone is a better basketball player than A.C. Green – and he was during the first half of the 1989-1990 NBA season as well.
Karl Malone will co-host the Gordon Monson show tomorrow on 1280 The Zone (97.5 FM) from 2-6 p.m. Karl called in today and invited himself,so it will be good!
Tonight is that big night, Deron Williams and the struggling New Jersey Nets face off in his old gym, the Energy Solutions Arena against his old club, our Utah Jazz. I hope you did not miss Prodigal Punk's great preview of this game, if you did you can catch it here. Tonight is going to be an emotional night - for the owners, the coaches, the other players, and obviously, the fans. However, we may be overlooking the emotional reaction this game will elicit from Deron Williams. Let's not forget that this is a guy who was traded, he did not demand a trade. He didn't leave as a free agent. He was our best player during the seasons he was here, and he was making a life here in Utah during the off-seasons as well. Without him we never would have won that one game in the Western Conference Finals against the San Antonio Spurs way back in the 2006-2007 season. Without him we wouldn't have even made the playoffs. Enough about me, let's take a look at what D-Will has to say about this situation:
"I'm forever thankful for the opportunity I was given in Utah, my first opportunity in the NBA. It was a great six years of my life. I had a lot of fun there, and we won a lot of basketball games. Making it to the Western Conference Finals was probably the highlight for me, being so close to a championship. But the whole time there was a great experience.
I learned a lot of valuable things during my time in Utah. Coach Sloan taught me toughness. He is a tough, hard-nosed guy, and he instilled that in his players. He taught us how to compete every day. It wasn't always about Xs and Os with him. It was also about competing and leaving it all out on the floor. You can do all the preparation in the world and all the talking in the world, but it just mattered to him when you went out there and did it on the floor.
My whole family loved Utah. We really enjoyed living there and being a part of that community. It'll be great to be back and playing in front of the fans that I came into the league with. There will probably be some mixed reviews, probably some boos out there, but I think there's still a lot of love too. I have nothing but love for the community there, for the fans there." - Deron Williams
You can read the rest of his blog entry at DeronWilliams.com here.
This game was supposed to be on NBA-TV, but I guess showing the Lakers and Clippers is more important. For the people lucky enough to go to the game, be good fans and represent the Jazz in a way that would make Larry H. Miller proud. And I don't just mean throw $10 million dollars at Mehmet Okur either, heh heh.
Go Jazz go!
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