GOAT debates should ideally have a player with the most assists and steals, but one man with both that and multiple 1000+ assist-seasons still never makes the cut.
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When Kendrick Perkins declared former Jazz point guard, John Stockton, as the best passer in the game of basketball over Magic Johnson last week, the NBA world didn’t take it well.
The 60-year-old, 1984 draftee, might be the all-time leader in assists or led the NBA in assists nine (straight) seasons to that of Magic three times, but still, people miss him in GOAT PG discussions.
Yes, he had the privilege of playing behind one of the best scorers of all time in Karl Malone, who could convert anything into a basket, throughout his career. But the 6ft 1” Gonzaga guard made it that easy for Malone to be the automatic scorer he was in Utah.
And this another mind-boggling, dominant, and unbreakable stat of his is a testament to his greatness as a point guard which is quite often overlooked because of the lack of championships in his 19-year career.
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John Stockton has the most 1000+ assists seasons
StatMuse recently revealed the players with the most 1000+ assists seasons in their career. There’s only one player who had 7-seasons of it, and no one else had more than one. In fact, the rest of the league has a combined two.
Most seasons with 1,000+ assists:
7 — John Stockton
1 — Everyone elseWhere does Stockton rank among point guards all-time? pic.twitter.com/WuBXOBn2k3
— StatMuse (@statmuse) August 21, 2022
The only two players apart from John to achieve that feat were Kevin Porter and Isiah Thomas, both with the Detroit Pistons, but on separate seasons.
One may or may not validate this man as the GOAT point guard, but him being on the top of both assists and steals categories and with a massive margin makes it difficult to overlook him.
The “Point God” of this generation is a couple thousand assists below Jayson Kidd and almost 5K behind John. Even on the all-time steals list, he’s at #1 followed by Kidd, Michael Jordan, and CP3.
Also read: Kevin Durant took 62 shots at ‘The Crawsover’ but was lauded for his 63 point outburst
A game might not be all about stats, but it is surely a major aspect of winning a game. And Stockton has won more games in his terrifically long career in the grandest stage of basketball, than the total games played by most of the players in the league.
