 Welcome to the complete collection of John Stockton's greatest stories. First and foremost I want to say a massive thank you to everybody who's been supporting this series thus far, you guys have shown a lot of love and it's making this a very exciting series to continue on with. If you have missed any of the videos in this series, there is a link down below in the description box and on the screen right now. You can click on that link and it will take you to a playlist that has every episode so far of this series. But today we're looking at John Stockton's greatest stories. These episodes take a long time to make with all the editing, finding all the footage, piling all the clips together, piecing it up. It takes a long time to make this video so I'd really appreciate it if you guys could help me out just by hitting that like button, it really helps the videos out. If you are new feel free to hit that subscribe button and don't forget to hit that notification button so you never miss an episode in this series. Lastly comment down below which player you would like to see next in this series and without further ado, welcome to the complete collection of John Stockton's greatest stories. I can remember coming into camp and seeing things he was doing, I was like, God, I used to think my point was good, I said, he's a good guy. If you were starting a franchise today, who's your number one pick out of all the players of the NBA? I don't believe this, by the way, John Stockton, I think he's the most complete person in his position. One of the greatest points of the game. I've always said I think John Stockton is the perfect point guy. You can't be fooled by that, you know, real nice face and, you know, that real quiet demeanor. When he stepped on the court, he was out to get you. A guy who probably controlled a team and a game better than anybody I've ever seen. Probably one of the greatest players that would play the game in his position. His sense of where he was on the floor, his peripheral vision, you'd say, how did he see him? Oh, he's over there. Boom, he throws the pass over there. You can't teach what John Stockton can see. He's one of those guys, every team wants a guy like John Stockton. John Stockton was either one of the best I ever played against, but those were illegal picks. Let's get that out the way. I played against John since I was 13 years old, and he's a much better outside shooter, much better with the basketball, and when you're talking about, you know, Nash and Stockton, I just think from a toughness standpoint, I don't think there's a comparison. Well, he's the best point guard in all time. When you played against John, I mean, you had to bring your lunch. I mean, you know, there was a toughness about him that he carried that, you know, I don't know if we have anybody in our game today that really brings that to the table. Anybody really got under your skin? No question. Kenny touched on it earlier. You play a playoff series, and you go against a guy over and over again. It's inevitable. And we played Utah two years in a row, six games, so 12 games against John Stockton. John was one of the strongest guards in the league. I don't know if you guys felt that. I hear about one on the screen, yeah. Yeah, but the toughness, the competitiveness. And I have the greatest respect for him. I see him away from the court, love him, great guy. But he was a dirty bastard. I've never seen a therapist about this. I'm going to, this is my time to go. There you go. I can tell you feel better. My amnesty, tongue is out, full extension. Keith, and Jay and Stockton got involved. And Michael looked at Stockton and said, don't do that. And now Stockton comes up and gives it right back to Michael. We started this off, this ball game off, by saying that he does little things like that to drive you nuts. Oh my god. John was a person that would stretch the boundaries. The PG version of what he was saying. I'm allowed to say that word on TV. That's how you got it. TV, you are. You all say a lot worse than that. No, no, no, no, no, that wouldn't be a TV, I don't. You can say dirty things. You can say dirty as much as you want. It's like A-T-B-O. A-T-B is like A-T-B-O. I think that John understood there's a personal space law. And he understood how to invade that as a guard. You know, when I'm talking to you, Ernie, I'm going to talk to you here. But John, exactly. It's so comfortable even if it's the same. He's playing a kind of European way. A little bit closer than you said. You're shooting a jump shot. It's respect that a guy's shooting a jump shot that you can't block it. So you kind of just contest. John made like he could block it. And he'd get under your feet. Or when you're running out, the ball is out of bounds, he's running out. Like this trip that he would do. And then all of a sudden the guy would trip and they throw the ball in at the same time and he'd go down and lay it in. So he had a lot of those type of bastardly moves. No, no, no, no, no. The first person that you ran into that like bust your ass that you knew that it was like, man, this shit for real. Like who was the first person that you ran into and it was like, man, it's a level. John Stockton. John Stockton embarrassed me, dog. Like John Stockton made me feel like, damn, dog. Like, do I know how to play basketball? You know, you had that moment where you like, shit, like am I sorry, dog? Like what the fuck? Like what the fuck is going on? I had never been taking out the game so fast. He had ripped me like twice. Like and not even like ripped on the ball. It's just like smarter than you. You know, I'm going for the outlet the wrong way. You know what I mean? But I'm still, you know what I mean? I get the loose ball. Oh, he gone still. I'm like, y'all might have to do something. He see your mistakes. And he was tough. Hard nose. He was. Take your under the feet. Screams, yeah. Like I remember. Was he way bigger than what you thought he was? Yeah, he was. He was way bigger than what I thought he was. He was a lot taller. Like, you know, when you look at him on the court, on TV, you know, like his look could be deceiving. It's almost like how Steph Curry looked. Like on TV, he looked like, oh man, like he just looked like a regular dude. But like when you stand next to him, you're like, yo, that's my boy. You're like, you look like an athlete. Yeah. John Stockton, though, he would like, he was so dope, dog. Cause he, he walked you all the way down to the wing. Right. And he would walk you to the same spot, whether you pressuring him or not. Like he knew what spot he was going to get to. He knew what he was like, he was fucked once he got to the spot that he was going to get to. Best point guard to ever play the game is who? Oh, John Stockton. Magic Johnson. I mean, those are the, those, those two are the best to probably ever play it. What did Stockton do better than you? I think he had like 3,000. He said the table, he had 5,000 more assists than I did. Okay. All right. And steals. I mean, he's the all-time assist leader in steals. And, you know, people don't really talk about the steals as much as the assists, but, you know, he plays both sides of the court and that's what makes him a complete player. When you look at those records, it's just, it's, it's amazing. And I just don't think he gets the do that he deserves. Well, he played in Utah. That's why. Well, yes, I, I, that's, that's fine. But still, I think sometimes he's left out of the mix of, you know, great point guards, great, great point guards. And, and we forget to sometimes mention him. All right. Now I remember one story when we had lost a few games in the row, we were back east and we were in Charlotte. Okay. And someone, namely some, a point guard named John Stockton had heard, overheard something supposedly on the radio that grandmama Larry Johnson had said about mailman. Do you remember this? Yeah, he, he, he got my goat that night. He, he, he needed something to get a goat. Mailman went, I think, for 56 that night. And I got every pass, I think, from, from Stockton. You, you fabricated a quote. Is that, you had the story, you made up a quote. He lied. Forget to fabricate, he lied. Steve, I had, I had some reliable sources that told me. Oh, we get away with reliable sources. That told me that somebody had said something. I merely relayed what I had heard from a lot of people. He's training for a career in journalism. This guy's got all the makings of a good guy. You hear reliable source. My source told me. Okay. I've never really gotten over, my first year I got traded to Houston and he had to shout over me to, to send the jazz to the finals. Russell will inbound at half court. That was so many things all wrapped up in the one. It was, it was our first chance to go to the championship. It was really the first time we'd been able to beat Houston at anything or, or, they just year after year, we kept running in those guys in the playoffs and, and to finally get over that hump. That was I think a snapshot of John Stockton that we have never seen before. I think other than the night that he was honored at the Delta center, the most emotional we've ever seen him. Welcome back to Primetime Stockton and Larry, you watched that again. I saw with great, great detail, attention to detail. Yep. And I got to tell you what happened in that play. And if you, now if you can see it again, it would mean even more. But at the time out, the coaches are over doing their thing and Carl says, hang on. He says, let me tell you what we ought to do. He says, Stockton, I guarantee you, you will be open. Now, and so they let the stock, now they called a pick. Okay, he didn't pick Drexler. He grabbed Drexler. Drexler wasn't going anywhere all night. And he didn't get called for it because they were watching Stock and then the infamous Bill Walton, uh-oh, and he drilled it. That had to be one of the great moments of jazz history. Uh-oh. Stockton, open three, catch! I was gonna come to you about that because so many people miss the pick, which is the reason the whole thing worked. And as Larry said, it really wasn't a pick. It was like fourth and one, and you stopped the running back. Well, it's like in a game like that, you know, I think one of the all-time greatest game, you force a referee to make a call, make him make an offensive foul call. You know, not a lot of them would do it. So I added in my mind that if there's any time that they're gonna do it with, who knows what would happen? I said, you know what, Stock? I said, you're going to be open. He looked at me, he said, okay, and Coach Sloan looked and just said, oh, like you guys go on and do what you wanna do. And I went out there and it's like, that's the only thing came to my mind is not just say barrel hugging, but holding and see what happened. And when Stock was so open, when the ball left his hand, I knew it was in. It's just one of those things. So it was like, man, it was unbelievable. Most memorable play in your career? Oh yes, about four, that play right there. And he had a lot of them, but just that play right there. And I think that's the most excited I've ever seen, John. But it's like some of the hits he took in the game for me. And people need to go back and realize, half of those points, I wasn't a guy, I was out wide, open under the basket. But just the intensity and what he bought to the game was just, I don't know, it was just unbelievable. Don's Hacken was one of the toughest guys I've ever played against there. We had a series on the playoffs. It was our first series in Sacramento. And we were playing against Utah, Great Carmel on the Stockton. And I felt that our team was in all of them. We were younger. And so I told Coach Adam on before the game, I said, I'm the first player of the game, I'm going to lay Stockton's ass out. Coach said, are you sure? I said, yeah. I said, trust me, Coach, this is the first game. We just need to do it like, you know, they're prepared for everything that's coming. They don't expect it. I lay him out on the screen. I'm talking about, I lay him out. One of the best screens I ever did. I got my shoulder kind of in that head area, too. Kind of making a little dirty. He pops up off the ground, pats me on the butt and says, nice screen. Do you know how you're moralizing that? You know what I mean? Yeah, he was one of the toughest guys. And I loved it, too. After that game, we would play him in the playoffs. And I would make rookie's weight on the bus. And I would say, watch the baddest man in the world pull up. And they're like, what do you mean? They think I'm going to talk about like his cars and all this. And John Stockton would come to the game literally in a minivan, pop his kids out, come in there, and bust us up. And he would show up. And he would probably have a plaid shirt on and jeans or something. His hair parted neatly on the side. Look, he'd be so unassuming. He'd be a guy that they probably check his ID in other arenas. Oh, yeah. You even thought he was coming straight out of Catholic Church? One of the kids up there lighting the candles? Or you thought, yeah, he was the valet. You definitely didn't think he was as bad a man as he was. But he knew that. And he knew that being unassumed was part of his swag. And so he knew that. And he used that to his advantage, too. And every once in a while, on the bus, we would hear it from the back of the bus coming out. Some cliche that I had, you know, and that guy wasn't ready. When we called on him, we pushed his button, but he wasn't ready. And John could imitate that. Deadly, you're making a million a year. Griffith, you're making $500,000, $300,000, $600,000. What's Larry Bird worth? $18 million? $20 million? He's kicking our butts. He was trying to motivate us. We were down by 20. So we went out and lost by 30. A guy who still apparently gets in fights and pick up games, if we can believe what we hear in Spokane, Washington. Well, the thing about stock, and I have to go back to Coach and Larry, one of the, if not the toughest player I ever played with. Literally, when he used to set picks for me, and I felt bad. I knew the ball was coming to me. Every single time he would set a pick, in every game, I would say, God, stock, be careful. He looked like what? And then after the game, his shoulder would be literally swollen. And I just remember a time in training camp where he was going after a loose ball. And of course, I hit stock thinking it was somebody else who was picking on stock doing the practice, another guard, because we had our little thing, and it was stopped. So I hit the wrong guy. And stock just brushed it off. I'm like, well, I know what you meant to do, but he was like one of the toughest guys that I've ever played with. You said that he was the one guy you just could not get under his skin. That you couldn't get under their skin, where their guy's? John Stockton. John Stockton. Really? Could never. How is that? Because John Stockton never said anything to no one. He didn't never say nothing to me. When I go at him, and I say something about him, he'll just walk like he didn't see me, like I wasn't even there. He doesn't go out there and play around with the game. He's very serious about it. He's a smart basketball player. Everybody say he's dirty, but I think that's wrong. I think that's not a statement for him. I think that he doesn't understand. He goes out and play basketball the way he knows how to play hard. He always just stayed away from me. He didn't say a thing to me, and it got to me so much, because what he did was, is he just didn't pay attention to me. And then if I say something anything about him, my cuss or anything, he'll just walk away. And that was a problem. When you don't give me a response, that really hurts me, because then you're not listening to me. And he was the only guy that ever did that, never listened to me. And I said, what am I doing? And then all of a sudden, and then all of a sudden he'll tell me, he'll take a charge, he'll give me on the bench, and then he'll just look at me and nod. And then I figured it out. I said, I gotta stop talking to him. I just got a plane. And I got to beat him with what he does. Don't say nothing to him and go at him. And when I start going at him and I figured him out, they start doubling me and they start switching players on me. And they didn't let him guard me at one point. And then I said, okay, I figured him out. I figured him out. Don't say nothing. Just go at him. And then the game became more competitive with me and him. It wasn't like I was scared of him. Hardest person you ever guarded, man. I'm gonna say John Stockton, man. I've been getting a lot of slack for this guy here. Everybody's been asking me why he is the toughest person in the guard, other than Michael, instead of Michael Jordan. First of all, it's my opinion. So that's the way it's gonna go. You look good. You look good. Because you said that John Stockton was more difficult to defend than Michael Jordan blasted me to me. And you have to defend yourself because how long did you really guard Michael Jordan? Man, listen, he was a guy who was fundamentally sound. He was set picks. He would do the right thing. He would shoot 12 times, make 10, and all that. He was just great. He wasn't tougher than Jordan. Yes, he was. Yes, he was. You guys didn't play against him. I did. Let me ask you this seriously, because when you say that, people are gonna be like, are you joking? And they did today. A lot of people. I know, a lot of people. And I gotta get enough time to explain. Not just face off the number of times that you saw John Stockton, but you're saying that he was more fundamentally sound than Michael Jordan. We were more athletic than he was. We were mad because he set picks and said he was dirty. If a guy comes and shoot 12 times, makes nine of them, shoots eight free throws and makes seven of them. That's 20-something points and have 15 assists and four steals a game and works out with Carl Malone and can deal it on a continuous basis. And I have to play against him nine and seven and nine times a year. That is hard to call. No, I believe that. Gary, let's be honest. You just didn't like playing him because he wouldn't talk back to you. True, that's true. That's true. That's a thing too. He wouldn't talk back to me. When Michael Jordan, he's a competitor, he's gonna go back at me that is easier for me to deny him the ball and do a lot of things. Wow. Then he gave you 50. He didn't give me 50. You gotta read your stats, right, baby? Just a little short story about him. He's the only guy, when I got into the NBA and I wasn't as good as I thought I was gonna be for the first two years, I watched him. And when I watched him, he's a player that all kids watch right now. I might've been more athletic than he was, but he did it the same way every night. Every night. For a guy, for him to only play 32 minutes, come in and shoot the ball 12 times, make nine or 10 of them shots, shoot eight free throws and make seven of them and then have 15 assists and four steals. That's the reason why he's the hardest person I ever had to guard. And that's why I respect him very much. Players were playing pop a shot with each other and it was winter stays on. Well, after we've been playing for a while, this 12 year old kid in a wheelchair comes up to John and wants to, or it comes to the, you know, can I play? You got, yeah, you can't. Well, it turns out the kid's pretty good. And it's apparent that he's gonna beat John. John gets up and starts blocking his shot. I found, wait a minute, there's something wrong with his picture and then I realized there wasn't really anything wrong with it, it was just a very clear definition of how competitive John Stockton is. One of the stories I got is his toughness. We was a tournament of America's and we was in Portland, Oregon and he did something to his leg where his leg actually wouldn't bend back out. It would always flare up every nine then, every once or two years actually where the bone will pop out. So we had training camp in Chicago and we're stretching. As we were stretching and ready to get up, Stockton couldn't get up. So he looked over at me and said, so of course I knew what it was. So he called a trainer over. The trainer from Miami. And he said, look, you need to pull on this really hard and it'll pop back in. Well, this guy here wanted no liability at all. So I watched as he did it himself. When he went to the Olympics, you know, he had a broken fibula and a lot of players that would have been a way to cop out. I made the Olympic team, but I broke my leg or something, but he continued to compete. There are a lot of great players in this league, but somehow they seem to get injured or miss games and John Stockton, you pretty much can pencil in 82 games every year and you know what you're gonna get and it doesn't matter if he's banged up, if he's sore, if he's hurt. You know, he's gonna be there. You know, he's gonna play the minutes and you know, he's gonna produce. It was, he should not play a number of games. And he was hurt sometimes so bad that I wouldn't even get eye contact with him in the game. I just say, how you doing? Oh, I'm fine. I'm ready to play. Never youth excuses. You know, I've seen him, you know, with a little nagging injury here, a little nagging injury there and right at game time I say, are you ready to go? Yep. And that has been John Stockton's greatest stories. If you enjoyed the video, I'd really appreciate it if you guys could hit that like button. It really helps the channel out. If you enjoy this video and you'd like to see more, be sure to hit that subscribe button and the notification button so you never miss an episode of this series. Comment down below which player you'd like to see next and here are two episodes of this series you might enjoy. With that said, I am out. Peace.