Who's higher on your all time list: John Stockton or Steve Nash

[tsherkin]

What a load.

Nash is 19.5% and Stockton is 20.8%, but Nash is 41.5% assist percentage while Stockton is 50.2%

Stocktons assist rate was effectively 21% higher with the turnover being nearly equal.

When you read the entirety of what I wrote, I will respond further. Cheery-picking a piece of it without the relevant explanation, which you then do not address, does not make for good discourse.

[clearlynotjesse]

I'm the biggest Nash homer here but it's a goddamn shame that the pro-Stockton arguments aren't "The limited data that we have for Stockton's career shows that he was a very clear positive on both ends despite age, size, and athletic limitations. It's not a huge leap to say prime Stockton was elite on both ends. On top of that Stockton started his career off a little faster and ended stronger." Instead we get "Actually Nash wasn't that good on offense."

[Texas Chuck]

It's like people forget that MDA left and Nash still led two more top 2 offenses. 08-09 Phoenix had the #2 offense in the NBA despite moving from smallball to a Shaq/Amare frontcourt and making a coaching change midseason. Then the next season had the #1 offense and the highest ORTG Nash ever had (RORTG 2nd highest). This was with Amare playing the 4 and Lopez/Frye playing the 5 and Nash was 35. So 34 & 35 year old Nash ditched smallball and MDA, and the offense was still the NBA's best. That's not to say MDA played no role but it is pretty obvious who deserves the lions share of the credit.

I don't think many of us forgot that. I mean Gentry kept getting head coaching jobs off of those Nash led offenses.....

I feel terrible for having started us down this road. These all or nothing posts are dumb. MDA, the system, the offensive talent, none of that made Steve Nash great. Steve Nash made Steve Nash great. Period. But by the same token when we start citing the team offensive ratings being at the top of the league every year in Dallas and Phoenix we should at least be willing to acknowledge he played in very favorable offensive situations.

That's all. But we have one poster trying to say Nash is just an MDA-creation which isn't worth engaging with, and we had multiple posters suggesting Nash didn't have favorable rosters or coaches, though to their credit they've backed off that realizing that of course he did.

But we do also need to be real about the Nash career arc. He wasn't better than Jason Kidd when they both played for the Suns even if he scored more efficiently in his limited playing time. He was down right bad for 2 years in Dallas getting benched for journeyman PG's in year 2 even. His unwillingness to curb his party lifestyle and take care of his body, certainly had him wearing down at the end of seasons in Dallas. Like this stuff is part of his story.

His story doesn't just start with take 2 in Phoenix and the MVP years, but too often posters act like this is who he always was. No. He was a very slow starter and then an underachiever. Then Cuban didn't pay him, he got a model pregnant and became a dad, and matured, cut the partying, got his body, particularly his back right, and he wrecked the league offensively.

[tsherkin]

I don't think many of us forgot that. I mean Gentry kept getting head coaching jobs off of those Nash led offenses.....

I feel terrible for having started us down this road. These all or nothing posts are dumb. MDA, the system, the offensive talent, none of that made Steve Nash great. Steve Nash made Steve Nash great. Period. But by the same token when we start citing the team offensive ratings being at the top of the league every year in Dallas and Phoenix we should at least be willing to acknowledge he played in very favorable offensive situations.

Sure. And we should be acknowledging that Utah did some work as well, right? They were 4th in the league twice, 2nd twice and first once as well. And that stretch 95-98 had them post 114.3, 113.3, 113.6 and 112.7, which is very impressive. There was also a large leap from 89 to 90 in terms of team offense (although Sloan technically coached most of the 89 season anyway), and basically an immediate shift into being an elite team. They were very, very impressive, and Stockton was a huge part of that.

[oaktownwarriors87]

Woah--you are making a major assumption.

You are assuming 3 Point Attempts are directly correlated to Offensive Efficiency and Rating.

Have you done research to show this to be true?

If the caveat for Nash'a success is D'Antoni, why were the Suns so abysmal offensively when Nash rode the bench? Since the team was still shooting tons of 3's when he was on the bench, shouldn't the teams eFG% stay decent when he is on the bench?

The Suns didn't have anyone that could put the ball on the floor, and they were a poor defensive team. Take away the one guy that can run the offense or create their own shot and they suck. It was a poorly constructed team that allowed Nash to succeed.

Despite that a 38 year old Stockton had a net rating of +18.5, better than any of Nash's. The idea that Nash could elevate a team beyond Stockton is bunk.

[Doctor MJ]

So, this debate's been going on for as long as I've been on RealGM, and I don't really relish getting into arguments at the moment, but since I've thought a lot about it, here are some thoughts:

1. I have Nash higher on my list.

2. I see Nash with the better offense and higher peak, I see Stockton with the better defense and long longevity. Anyone who agrees with these statement is someone I'm largely in agreement with, even if we end up disagreeing on the GOAT list ordering.

3. When I came on RealGM in '04-05, this was a debate on everyone's minds. One argument used against Nash as an MVP candidate was "He's not even as good as Stockton, and obviously Stockton's not an MVP level player". I was coming at this having recently changed my mind (pre-RealGM) from "Obviously a guy who looks like Nash can't be MVP", too "I can't believe it, but I think Nash is actually the MVP". My response to that point about Stockton at the time was:

Whether or not Nash is better than Stockton was, are we sure that Stockton wasn't an MVP player? Are we sure that Stockton wasn't more valuable than Malone? And these were questions I looked into earnestly over the years with an open mind.

4. When we first got access to +/- data late in Stockton's career, it was essentially exactly what we were looking for as an indicator that Stockton might have been the true Jazz MVP, and I think a lot of us have kept that in mind ever since.

However, a key point at the time was this: We're not seeing data from prime Malone/Stockton. We're seeing stuff from their post-prime, during which Malone was still a big minute volume scorer but Stockton had become a limited minutes guy in a non-volume scoring role - the former can help how a player looks like +/-, while the latter allows you to age much more gracefully.

This left me and others waiting for earlier +/- data, and among other things, looking to see if we still saw an argument for Stockton over Malone once we got that data.

5. At this point we have raw +/- data back to '93-94 (in the regular season), and I would say it's given a resounding "Malone was the MVP when the Jazz mattered" answer. In the 6 '90s years where we have data, the data we have gives Malone the total +/- edge in 5 of those 6 years, and in the one exception ('95-96, where we don't have playoff data), I find it awfully hard to look at what happened in the playoffs and see Stockton as the better player.

To me this says pretty definitively that any notion of Stockton actually being someone who should have been considered as a serious MVP candidate - going against what the basketball thought was at the time - is misguided, which is certainly relevant to the debate in this thread where he's being compared to a guy who absolutely deserved to be seen as a serious MVP candidate.

6. From there, that takes us to what I'd say is actually the key question on people's minds when they have this debate, more so than who actually had the greater career:

Is it reasonable to see Stockton as someone who could have done what Nash did if only he'd been given the opportunity?

Before diving into some specifics, I think it's important to note that anyone answering "Yes" and having that be a key point in why they pick Stockton over Nash in this thread's debate, is not going based on what the player actually did, but what Stockton could have done.

I'm certainly not going to say this is a fundamentally wrong approach, but you've got to be careful when you do this. For example:

I think it's almost a certainty that both Stockton & Nash were less raw coming out of college than most of their peers - 4 year college players, smarter than their peers, not remotely drafted with an eye toward "upside", yet both took several years before they were given NBA floor generalship. Should we then treat their early years as back-ups as all-star years?

You do you, but if you're treating Stockton as if he had better-than-MVP-Nash play inside him, and giving him the nod based on that, then why not give both these guys credit for those early years when he should have had the ball in his hands and didn't?

Okay all that aside, on the question of whether Stockton could have done what Nash did?

7. I'd acknowledge a frustrating uncertainty here. On some level we'll never know.

What do we know?

8. That the initial impression that Nash represented what point guards would do in the new era, and thus guys like Stockton, Isiah, Price, etc, could "bump up to" in the new era simply because the landscape had changed, has not proven correct.

We're now 17+ years away from when the Nash MVP debate began, and we've never seen any point guard that really resembles Nash's offensive dominance. When we look at the other guys in the running to possibly being better offensive players than Nash since then, they don't even play a role that resembles a "traditional point guard".

17 years ago people might have thought we'd be seeing a ton of a ball dominant 6'3"-ish guys dominate the ball as pass-first playmakers, but it hasn't happened. The closest to Nash would be Chris Paul, and he doesn't approach the role similarly to Nash. Frankly, I'd say Stockton & Paul were the more similar players, which makes it hard to swallow the idea that if Stockton in a later era he'd naturally play like Nash. Seems more likely that he'd play like Paul.

9. We know that Stockton's APG numbers are a considerably bigger deal to people who analyze Stockton after the fact than it was seen at the time, and that there's a tendency to look at APG as a proxy for playmaking ability/value.

10. But we also know that an offense's trend toward assist-creation, and specifically assist creation by one individual, is not the same as playmaking value. We now have the term "Rondo Assist" for an assist created by a guy who gets to dominate the ball and then pass it to guys in less valuable scoring position who are then expected to shoot quickly enough that the guy who passed it to them will be credited with an assist, but we have data pertaining to this from Stockton's career too.

11. I saw that it was pointed out that Stockton was racking up assists before Sloan as proof that he wasn't a product of Sloan, and that's true, but it ignores the fact that the Jazz were playing in what could be called an "assist-inflating system" - based on assist generation outstripping ORtg - under the previous coach (Leydon) even before Stockton was in the pros.

12. There's also the matter that Stockton - like most glamour-assist guys - seemed to get extra assists credited to him at home, while Nash is the rare example of a guy who seems to have a stingy hometown scorekeeper.

13. There's also the matter that Nash played in a slower era, with lower league ORtgs, and less FG's being produced in general.

All of that are reasons to take APG with a grain of salt, even before we consider that with Nash assisting on 3's more than Stockton, the value of his assists would be expected to be more valuable on average even without the gravitational impact of his "Nashing" style of probing the defense.

14. With all that said about assists, probably the bigger question to me is about Stockton's volume scoring capacity. As has been pointed out in this thread, we have this weird thing where Stockton plays most of his career as just about the most conservative shooter you can imagine...but early in his career he doesn't seem to be like this.

15. Those arguing that the early stuff represents Stockton's true tendency and and capacity have a point that makes sense from a narrative arc perspective, but it's not that simple.

16. First, as I alluded to before, there's the matter of it mattering how guys actually played. We have plenty of footage of Stockton in his prime where he has plenty of opening to take a shot that not only would Nash have taken, but point guards from Stockton's era would have taken.

17. Second, there's the matter that the Jazz offense really doesn't get bogged down in the playoffs because Stockton isn't behaving like a scoring threat. One thing to feed your man on the interior as Plan A, but as a point guard, much of your job is supposed to be figuring out what else to do when the defense is ready for Plan A.

18. We can certainly attribute some of the blame to Sloan here, but we should remember that the next time Sloan had an all-star point guard, that point guard didn't seem held back in the same way at all.

19. It's entirely possible that Malone is the actual issue here - in terms of him petulantly demanding the ball, and Stockton & Sloan feeling like they have to do what Malone wants - but that point would seem more significant if we actually had indicators that Stockton was the more essential piece when the team was contending for a title, and as I said before, that's not what the data says to me.

20. There's the matter we need to make sure we don't end up looking to equate these two players' skills because we see superficial similarities.

Stockton should have shot some of the shots he didn't take, but he was also nowhere near what Nash was as a shooter, and so much of what Nash was able to do gravitationally came from the fact that he was a threat to make a shot anywhere in the half-court. When Nash was shooting those runners & floaters, often off "the wrong foot", what he was doing was taking advantage of a moment when his shot couldn't be blocked by taking a much harder shot than most guys shooting the ball from that spot on the floor. Nash isn't the only guy in history to do this, but such was Nash's shooting ability that there was data to suggest that Nash was the best all-half-court shooter of his era even before attempting to factor in degree of difficulty.

21. I realize I haven't talked about the misguided notions of "system players". The maddening thing to me here is that this was something that was instantly rebuttable in 2004 if you understood the root of the term, yet it became clear that people would continue using it as a criticism of Nash for forever simply because it "felt right" to them.

"System player" is a generalization of the term "system quarterback" in football. A "system quarterback" is a college player who puts up huge numbers because of the college system he's in, but can't do it in the pros even if you give him that same system. The term was invented after back-to-back University of Houston quarterbacks (Andre Ware & David Klingler) were drafted very high and became busts. The "system quarterback" tag was thus a label created after scouting mistakes were made so that future scouts would be warier about expecting college performance at a university known for big numbers to be able to do it in the pros.

The terms "system quarterback" was never, ever, ever, ever, EVER intended to mean "He's a very valuable NFL player, but you have to build the system around his strengths", else Michael Vick would have been called a "system quarterback" coming out of college.

So note first here that the idea of applying "system player" to guys who were already in the pros killing it, is the wrong way to use the term, despite the fact that people who use this in basketball typically use it exclusively to refer to these players. Hence, if you see someone using the term "system player" on these boards to criticize a player, know that this is someone who doesn't understand the term they are using.

22. Worse, if we map "system quarterback" into stats, what it would mean is essentially "a guy who has big stats, but isn't hard to replace". Aka "big production, small impact". This is "worse" because it's literally the opposite of what was going on when people used it against Nash. Literally, it was the absence of his production - particularly PPG - that was central to why people were so suspect of him, and it was his impact that was putting him in the MVP race.

People didn't just use a term they didn't understand, they looked to apply it in precisely the opposite direction to what would be reasonable...and it made them look foolish in '04-05. I'll refrain from going further about what it says about folks who are seen doing it in 2022.

23. I also haven't mentioned the whole "but it's a gimmick offense" attack. People have rebutted it well in this thread, but I'd be remiss if I didn't address it because again, it's people being 180 degrees wrong. The argument at the time was that the offense now known as "pace & space" a) didn't work in the playoffs, and b) prevented you from having a great defense. All of this stuff was disproved very quickly for anyone looking to see if it could be disproved, but most who used the argument never adjusted...which has become more and more bizarre with time.

At this point, as y'all know I tend to say: "pace & space" is just how you play winning basketball, and the bizarre thing is that this would have even more true 40 years ago, yet the collective epiphany equates it to something that only happened recently while also trying to insist that rule changes made the difference.

24. The rule changes of the past 40 years are not what has made the difference. Period.

The key rule change of the past 40 years was the removal of the illegal defense rules in 2001, which made it HARDER for the offense and EASIER for the defense. And in fact, if you look back to 2001, you can find guys like Pat Riley who are against the rule change because they thought it would hurt the offense. And of course it did until the offenses changed their strategies to pace & space.

They got rid of the illegal defense rule not to make things easier for offenses, but to sour the milk of the existing strategies and encourage them to try to play faster. And of course, that's precisely what's happened.

25. What about the hand check rule change of 2004? It had an effect helping offense in the short term, but that effect was a) minor compared to what happened as pace & space really came into its own, and b) hand check rules are nothing new, and the NBA has periodically made tweaks that were really more points of emphasis for decades whenever defenders started abusing the actual rule that's been around for a very long time - no shoving the guy who is driving with the ball.

26. Finally, I'm going to bring up what we know about Nash as an athlete beyond basketball - feel free to bring up stuff about Stockton if you're aware of it as I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but I think we need to remember what an outlier Nash was beyond the court.

In high school, Nash was a star player not just in basketball, but in soccer (where is father & brother were pros), hockey, lacrosse & rugby, and he had impressed so much as a shortstop prospect in baseball prior to high school, that there was a scout actively encouraging him to go back to baseball in high school, and then to walk on to the Santa Clara baseball team (since he was there for basketball anyway).

There's actually even an academic paper on Steve Nash's athleticism, where one of the reasons Nash's case study is so special is that he's not someone who only operates on intuition. He had great intuition yes, but he also methodically built up his skills quite consciously from a young age.

None of this necessarily means Nash was better at basketball than Player X - be it Stockton or anyone else - but I do think it's critical to understand that Nash represents an extreme outlier in areas that we wouldn't necessarily see as related. We're talking about someone with a) extremely fast neural processing, b) extremely good fine-motor skills, c) extremely good general balance and body control, d) extreme creativity & anticipation, e) extreme awareness of his body and skills, f) extreme planning and drive to perfect his game.

Of course, we all think of him at a time where he had back issues that hampered some of what he could show on the court, and that's not something I'd suggest we should simply ignore to credit him with more than he actually did, but I think it's important to point out that part of what he was doing in those years was figuring out how to compensate for these issues that didn't exist when he was young.

As I look back on how he's talked about 17 years after he became a lightning rod, I just think it's so critical to understand that we haven't seen "a bunch of new Nashes" like we would expect if he were simply the right guy at the right time. Dude was a freak, and while that doesn't mean he was better than X, it does mean I think we should be very, very cautious about assuming other players ought to be able to do what Nash did if only given the opportunity.

[Ambrose]

It's like people forget that MDA left and Nash still led two more top 2 offenses. 08-09 Phoenix had the #2 offense in the NBA despite moving from smallball to a Shaq/Amare frontcourt and making a coaching change midseason. Then the next season had the #1 offense and the highest ORTG Nash ever had (RORTG 2nd highest). This was with Amare playing the 4 and Lopez/Frye playing the 5 and Nash was 35. So 34 & 35 year old Nash ditched smallball and MDA, and the offense was still the NBA's best. That's not to say MDA played no role but it is pretty obvious who deserves the lions share of the credit.

I don't think many of us forgot that. I mean Gentry kept getting head coaching jobs off of those Nash led offenses.....

I feel terrible for having started us down this road. These all or nothing posts are dumb. MDA, the system, the offensive talent, none of that made Steve Nash great. Steve Nash made Steve Nash great. Period. But by the same token when we start citing the team offensive ratings being at the top of the league every year in Dallas and Phoenix we should at least be willing to acknowledge he played in very favorable offensive situations.

That's all. But we have one poster trying to say Nash is just an MDA-creation which isn't worth engaging with, and we had multiple posters suggesting Nash didn't have favorable rosters or coaches, though to their credit they've backed off that realizing that of course he did.

But we do also need to be real about the Nash career arc. He wasn't better than Jason Kidd when they both played for the Suns even if he scored more efficiently in his limited playing time. He was down right bad for 2 years in Dallas getting benched for journeyman PG's in year 2 even. His unwillingness to curb his party lifestyle and take care of his body, certainly had him wearing down at the end of seasons in Dallas. Like this stuff is part of his story.

His story doesn't just start with take 2 in Phoenix and the MVP years, but too often posters act like this is who he always was. No. He was a very slow starter and then an underachiever. Then Cuban didn't pay him, he got a model pregnant and became a dad, and matured, cut the partying, got his body, particularly his back right, and he wrecked the league offensively.

I think you and I agree. I mean it's right in my last post that I'm not denying MDA played a role. Certainly the roster did as well. What I was saying was more about other posts in this thread that give Nash seemingly zero credit whatsoever.

[tsherkin]

So, this debate's been going on for as long as I've been on RealGM, and I don't really relish getting into arguments at the moment, but since I've thought a lot about it, here are some thoughts:

Always nice to see you drop one of these, Doc.

[Texas Chuck]

So, this debate's been going on for as long as I've been on RealGM, and I don't really relish getting into arguments at the moment, but since I've thought a lot about it, here are some thoughts:

Always nice to see you drop one of these, Doc.

Doc on Nash is definitely always something special.

Though some of that feels not particularly relevant. Nobody serious has been saying Stockton could be Nash. Or worrying about him hot tub time machined to Nash's era.

The debate is how valuable of a player each of them are and who had a better career. Not starting with Nash as the default correct answer and then saying see Stockton was not as good at playing like Nash as Nash was so he's not as good.

That would be as silly as dismissing Nash because he was a very bad defender as opposed to the very strong defender that Stockton was. Or dismissing Nash for not being the ironman that Stockton was. I do talk about his lifestyle because its clearly relevant to his career.

He was a very good player and then he was the very best offensive player in the league. Basically overnight. And since we can't credit MDA. We can't talk about a roster tailor made for him, well we better at least acknowledge him finally taking his career fully seriously, right?

And while we don't have the same detail of shooting data, I take issue that Stockton wasn't a great shooter. This was a guy who in the years we do have shooting data for shot 50% from midrange, 40% from 3, was an 83% FT shooter and his TS and adjusted shooting numbers are every bit as good as Nash's.

Nash is a slightly better shooter, but not nearly to the degree Doc argues. We can romantize the one footed shots if we want, but you don't get extra points for style, or shouldn't. My boy Dirk has the 2nd most signature shot in the history of the game behind only the skyhook, but he doesn't get extra credit for it lol.

[Doctor MJ]

So, this debate's been going on for as long as I've been on RealGM, and I don't really relish getting into arguments at the moment, but since I've thought a lot about it, here are some thoughts:

Always nice to see you drop one of these, Doc.

I appreciate the kind words about my rant T! I was debating putting most of it in spoilers so people sick of me beating a dead horse wouldn't have to hear the broken record. Maybe should have - despite me trying to avoid an argument, by the end, I realize I riled myself up again, ugh - but I'm glad if it's good read for some.

[tsherkin]

And while we don't have the same detail of shooting data, I take issue that Stockton wasn't a great shooter.

Didn't feel like he said that. It read to me that he just wasn't the same level as Nash. Given their FT%, the difference in 3pt shooting volume, and the huge difference in assisted buckets (Stockton was a 44.5% assisted 2PT dude from 97 forward, 65.1% on threes; Nash 10.2% on 2s and 43.8% on 3s from 05-10, 16% and 53.1% on his career), there is something to be said about the difference in ability there.

To be sure, it's fair to look at this stuff and be like "okay, so there's A difference, but how big a difference is there?" That's what you appear to be doing. Stockton was an 82.6% FT shooter on his career compared to Nash at 90.4% (who led the league in FT% twice), which is not a trivial difference. And there is a notable difference in how many of Nash's 3s were unassisted compared to Stockton, and then you look at the numbers. Nash at 42.8% 3P on 3.2 3PA/g on his career. Stockton at 38.4% on 1.5 3PA/g on his career... and that's with three years of the line being pulled in. He shot 35.2% over the first decade of his career on 1.2 3PA/g. Now, there were some cultural elements regarding the 3, right? It had only been part of the NBA for half a decade or so when he joined the league, etc, etc. Legitimate remarks. But 98 forward, he was a 38.6% 3PT shooter on 1.2 3PA/g. Fairly similar. So that does highlight a difference in ability, even without accounting for extra passing support.

Food for thought in this conversation. We can debate the degree of difference in their shooting ability, but there is a sizeable gap between the two.

My boy Dirk has the 2nd most signature shot in the history of the game behind only the skyhook, but he doesn't get extra credit for it lol.

No, but he does get credit for how insanely effective he was. Dude was taking nearly 5 shots per game (4.88) from 16-23 feet on his career. At 47.4%. That's... fairly absurd. Yeah, it wasn't just the style, you are absolutely correct. It was the efficiency on volume, the actual impact of what he was doing. Dirk was stupid good, and a part of it was how he was able to confound defenses with his post moves and his intelligent use of his body to guard the ball.

[Texas Chuck]

And while we don't have the same detail of shooting data, I take issue that Stockton wasn't a great shooter.

Didn't feel like he said that. It read to me that he just wasn't the same level as Nash. Given their FT%, the difference in 3pt shooting volume, and the huge difference in assisted buckets (Stockton was a 44.5% assisted 2PT dude from 97 forward, 65.1% on threes; Nash 10.2% on 2s and 43.8% on 3s from 05-10, 16% and 53.1% on his career), there is something to be said about the difference in ability there.

To be sure, it's fair to look at this stuff and be like "okay, so there's A difference, but how big a difference is there?" That's what you appear to be doing. Stockton was an 82.6% FT shooter on his career compared to Nash at 90.4% (who led the league in FT% twice), which is not a trivial difference. And there is a notable difference in how many of Nash's 3s were unassisted compared to Stockton, and then you look at the numbers. Nash at 42.8% 3P on 3.2 3PA/g on his career. Stockton at 38.4% on 1.5 3PA/g on his career... and that's with three years of the line being pulled in. He shot 35.2% over the first decade of his career on 1.2 3PA/g. Now, there were some cultural elements regarding the 3, right? It had only been part of the NBA for half a decade or so when he joined the league, etc, etc. Legitimate remarks. But 98 forward, he was a 38.6% 3PT shooter on 1.2 3PA/g. Fairly similar. So that does highlight a difference in ability, even without accounting for extra passing support.

Food for thought in this conversation. We can debate the degree of difference in their shooting ability, but there is a sizeable gap between the two.

My boy Dirk has the 2nd most signature shot in the history of the game behind only the skyhook, but he doesn't get extra credit for it lol.

No, but he does get credit for how insanely effective he was. Dude was taking nearly 5 shots per game (4.88) from 16-23 feet on his career. At 47.4%. That's... fairly absurd. Yeah, it wasn't just the style, you are absolutely correct. It was the efficiency on volume, the actual impact of what he was doing. Dirk was stupid good, and a part of it was how he was able to confound defenses with his post moves and his intelligent use of his body to guard the ball.

Thanks. These are all good points and I appreciate you holding me accountable here.

[colts18]

So, this debate's been going on for as long as I've been on RealGM, and I don't really relish getting into arguments at the moment, but since I've thought a lot about it, here are some thoughts:

Always nice to see you drop one of these, Doc.

And while we don't have the same detail of shooting data, I take issue that Stockton wasn't a great shooter. This was a guy who in the years we do have shooting data for shot 50% from midrange, 4from 3, was an 83% FT shooter and his TS and adjusted shooting numbers are every bit as good as Nash's.

Nash is a slightly better shooter, but not nearly to the degree Doc argues. We can romantize the one footed shots if we want, but you don't get extra points for style, or shouldn't. My boy Dirk has the 2nd most signature shot in the history of the game behind only the skyhook, but he doesn't get extra credit for it lol.

Stockton had the best mid-range shooting numbers of this era. He was no slouch at shooting. He did shoot 52 FG%, 40 3P%, 83 FT% shooting for his last 10 seasons of his career. You have to remember that the 3 point line didn't exist when Stockton grew up so he had no reason to practice it. In college, there was no 3 point line at all during Stockton's career. The first 3 point line he encountered was in the NBA during an era when no one shot 3 pointers. If he grew up in Nash's era, he is a 42% 3 point shooter.

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[Doctor MJ]

So, this debate's been going on for as long as I've been on RealGM, and I don't really relish getting into arguments at the moment, but since I've thought a lot about it, here are some thoughts:

Always nice to see you drop one of these, Doc.

Doc on Nash is definitely always something special.

Though some of that feels not particularly relevant. Nobody serious has been saying Stockton could be Nash. Or worrying about him hot tub time machined to Nash's era.

The debate is how valuable of a player each of them are and who had a better career. Not starting with Nash as the default correct answer and then saying see Stockton was not as good at playing like Nash as Nash was so he's not as good.

That would be as silly as dismissing Nash because he was a very bad defender as opposed to the very strong defender that Stockton was. Or dismissing Nash for not being the ironman that Stockton was. I do talk about his lifestyle because its clearly relevant to his career.

He was a very good player and then he was the very best offensive player in the league. Basically overnight. And since we can't credit MDA. We can't talk about a roster tailor made for him, well we better at least acknowledge him finally taking his career fully seriously, right?

And while we don't have the same detail of shooting data, I take issue that Stockton wasn't a great shooter. This was a guy who in the years we do have shooting data for shot 50% from midrange, 40% from 3, was an 83% FT shooter and his TS and adjusted shooting numbers are every bit as good as Nash's.

Nash is a slightly better shooter, but not nearly to the degree Doc argues. We can romantize the one footed shots if we want, but you don't get extra points for style, or shouldn't. My boy Dirk has the 2nd most signature shot in the history of the game behind only the skyhook, but he doesn't get extra credit for it lol.

Chuck I appreciate you letting my moments roll past you. I think I've been better lately, but stuff kinda burst out of me there.

I want to address a little of what you said here without forcing us to go over the same stuff all over again.

1. I can definitely acknowledge that after my first couple statements, the orientation of my post was about asking if Stockton could match what Nash did more so than the other way around. And while there are reasons why making a particular post like this, it's a asymmetrical analysis that is less focused on overall assessment, and more focused on teeing off on some of the things people have said about Nash over the years.

I can absolutely respect someone rating Stockton's career as higher, and I do think you can argue we don't know definitively that Nash was the overall more capable player.

2. It's important to me for it to be known that I'm high on both Nash and D'Antoni than most. I'm not someone saying "D'Antoni was meh, it was all about Nash!".

I think the key thing here, from my perspective, is that the way teammates (players & coaches) tend to get used against each other dismiss what the other does as if we're talking about a zero-sum game when it most definitely isn't.

I consider D'Antoni to be the most important coach of the 2000s, and arguably the most important coach of the 21st century (Pop is the most accomplished, and perhaps the all-around highest quality coach, but D'Antoni's innovation was massive). But him thinking of better ways to use players doesn't mean the players themselves aren't doing great things.

It would be one thing if we were literally talking about a situation where the coach/manager/boss was so good at tactics that his adjustments made his team win all the time, but not only is that most definitely not the case with D'Antoni (he's not that great a tactical adjustment), it's not the case for any basketball coach we've ever seen in the history of the game, and to be clear:

That was by design.

The free flowing nature of the game was designed to be a game where the players had to do the figuring out rather than the coach - Naismith famously said he didn't even think basketball needed coaches, and while he would later admit to being wrong on that, it's still never been anything like gridiron football.

Historical footnote: As late as the 1930s, college coaches were not allowed to talk to their on-court players. It was considered the job of the team captain to literally decide strategy. (Incidentally, in the pros at this point, there largely was no distinction between the team captain and the coach, though the Globetrotters are an exception that might be said to prove the rule.)

3. I also want to be clear that I'm not looking to disparage Nash's teammates as being uninvolved in the success. Stockton's teammate Malone looms larger in this discussion to me because he was literally the star of Stockton's team, but Marion & Stoudemire were worthy all-stars, and in that first year when the Suns' had Johnson as their #4 player gave them an incredible Top

4. I'm okay with you saying "Nash was better, but Stockton was an excellent shooter too". I would point that an 83% free throw shooter is a far cry from a 90% one. Nash ranks as the 2nd best career FT% shooter in history, while Stockton comes in 148th. I know free throws don't tell more than a small fraction of the shooting story, but they give us something more apples-to-apples for comparison, and I do think people need to understand how much of a stretch it is to imagine Stockton shooting like Nash "if he just got the opportunity" when his FT% is below guys like Derrick Rose and Dennis Schroeder.

5. I bring up the degree of difficulty of Nash's shots not so much to give him "shooting extra credit", but to emphasize the effect it had on his gravity. The more variety of shots he could hit, the less you opening you could give him, the more space his teammates got. Nash's proven ability to make such hard shots helped his teammates get easier ones.

[Doctor MJ]

Always nice to see you drop one of these, Doc.

And while we don't have the same detail of shooting data, I take issue that Stockton wasn't a great shooter. This was a guy who in the years we do have shooting data for shot 50% from midrange, 4from 3, was an 83% FT shooter and his TS and adjusted shooting numbers are every bit as good as Nash's.

Nash is a slightly better shooter, but not nearly to the degree Doc argues. We can romantize the one footed shots if we want, but you don't get extra points for style, or shouldn't. My boy Dirk has the 2nd most signature shot in the history of the game behind only the skyhook, but he doesn't get extra credit for it lol.

Stockton had the best mid-range shooting numbers of this era. He was no slouch at shooting. He did shoot 52 FG%, 40 3P%, 83 FT% shooting for his last 10 seasons of his career. You have to remember that the 3 point line didn't exist when Stockton grew up so he had no reason to practice it. In college, there was no 3 point line at all during Stockton's career. The first 3 point line he encountered was in the NBA during an era when no one shot 3 pointers. If he grew up in Nash's era, he is a 42% 3 point shooter.

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I would emphasize that it really matters whether the defense is trying to keep you from shooting or not.

People have been prone to talking about Chris Paul's midrange game like it's Jordan's, forgetting the fact that Paul is taking those shots because the defense is giving up that real estate on purpose, while Jordan did it against the teeth of the defense. Not trying to equate Nash with Jordan of course, but it matters that that data comes from Stockton being in the 12 PPG phase of his career.

Not saying Stockton isn't a very good shooter, because he is, but when one of the big issues in your career is "Didn't shoot enough, would pass up open shots", then you're going to be facing a defense less geared toward stopping you from shooting.

Also, I really take issue with you using the 42% number for "if he grew up in Nash's era" because Nash was a career 42.8% shooter. When you use that number while name-checking Nash, you're essentially saying "Stockton was equal Nash if he just grew up later", ignoring the massive FT% gap, and the fact Nash put up such efficient shooting numbers while facing defenses more afraid of his shooting.

[falcolombardi]

Always nice to see you drop one of these, Doc.

And while we don't have the same detail of shooting data, I take issue that Stockton wasn't a great shooter. This was a guy who in the years we do have shooting data for shot 50% from midrange, 4from 3, was an 83% FT shooter and his TS and adjusted shooting numbers are every bit as good as Nash's.

Nash is a slightly better shooter, but not nearly to the degree Doc argues. We can romantize the one footed shots if we want, but you don't get extra points for style, or shouldn't. My boy Dirk has the 2nd most signature shot in the history of the game behind only the skyhook, but he doesn't get extra credit for it lol.

Stockton had the best mid-range shooting numbers of this era. He was no slouch at shooting. He did shoot 52 FG%, 40 3P%, 83 FT% shooting for his last 10 seasons of his career. You have to remember that the 3 point line didn't exist when Stockton grew up so he had no reason to practice it. In college, there was no 3 point line at all during Stockton's career. The first 3 point line he encountered was in the NBA during an era when no one shot 3 pointers. If he grew up in Nash's era, he is a 42% 3 point shooter.

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42% 3-point shooter how? Of corner 3's, off the dribble,volume?

Saying someone would be a 42% 3 point shooter a feat usually only accomplished by pure corner/spot-up guys is a big claim. Even curry doesnt hit that mark for his average prime season

Specially when stockton had a higher percentage of his jumpers come off catch and shot tjan nash

[tsherkin]

Thanks. These are all good points and I appreciate you holding me accountable here.

And you gave me a chance to show Dirk some love, so it was beautiful!

[Owly]

12. There's also the matter that Stockton - like most glamour-assist guys - seemed to get extra assists credited to him at home, while Nash is the rare example of a guy who seems to have a stingy hometown scorekeeper.

So first of course we have to say that a difference could be a difference in styles of play home/road or luck .... not necessarily on scorekeepers.

That said my impression was that whilst you're right on Nash as huge outlier in getting more raw road assists, Stockton is middle of the pack (more home as is typical, teams being better at home, but near the middle). I think STATs inc had an article looking at this too mid career and with Stockton as the primary focus looking at a couple of years and concluded he wasn't (didn't look good for Mark Price iirc).

According to one Excel I did (a few years ago) looking presumably at players with a certain number of assists (originally said pgs but did LeBron too) crude ratio of home to road so no accounting for team's road resilience so teams with a strong homecourt (mainly Denver, but maybe Utah) are getting hurt a touch too much versus a fairer test ... Stockton ranked 9 of 19. Nash is the outlier 19th. Andre Miller, Tim Hardaway, Bogues were the top 3. Nash, James, Payton bottom 3.

If scorekeepers were inflating Stockton I'm not sure there's evidence that it was done at home, though I may be proved incorrect by deeper analysis.

[Doctor MJ]

12. There's also the matter that Stockton - like most glamour-assist guys - seemed to get extra assists credited to him at home, while Nash is the rare example of a guy who seems to have a stingy hometown scorekeeper.

So first of course we have to say that a difference could be a difference in styles of play home/road or luck .... not necessarily on scorekeepers.

That said my impression was that whilst you're right on Nash as huge outlier in getting more raw road assists, Stockton is middle of the pack (more home as is typical, teams being better at home, but near the middle). I think STATs inc had an article looking at this too mid career and with Stockton as the primary focus looking at a couple of years and concluded he wasn't (didn't look good for Mark Price iirc).

According to one Excel I did (a few years ago) looking presumably at players with a certain number of assists (originally said pgs but did LeBron too) crude ratio of home to road so no accounting for team's road resilience so teams with a strong homecourt (mainly Denver, but maybe Utah) are getting hurt a touch too much versus a fairer test ... Stockton ranked 9 of 19. Nash is the outlier 19th. Andre Miller, Tim Hardaway, Bogues were the top 3. Nash, James, Payton bottom 3.

If scorekeepers were inflating Stockton I'm not sure there's evidence that it was done at home, though I may be proved incorrect by deeper analysis.

You're right that we don't know for sure that it's about the scorekeepers in the case of an individual player - that it could be something else pertaining to a change in playing tendency on the road - however:

1. I think it's a pretty well established thing that guys' whose reputations are made by certain stats tend to get the benefit of the doubt in those stats by those who are "on their side". A classic example is the "who gets credit for the rebound?" debate on plays where one guy touches it first but another actually gains possession. Both deserve some credit, but it can't be split in the box score, so the scorekeeper has to make a decision, and it's natural to give the nod to the guy who plays the "rebounding" role.

2. We've seen how extreme assists in particular can get inflated.

Partly because I disagreed with the blatant stat manipulation (that I did) and partly because I'm a Laker fan, I gave Nick Van Exel like 23 assists one game. If he was vaguely close to a guy making a shot, I found a way to give him an assist. Afterwards, I fully expected someone to talk to me about it. Indeed they did. A senior management guy - "great job Alex, that'll get this game on Sportscenter tomorrow morning!" We (VAN) lost badly, of course.

While rebounds are largely a "There was a rebound, so I must mark one player as getting the rebound, who should it be?" situation, with assists, the scorekeeper is literally deciding whether there was an assist or not, and that gives him more power.

3. Just because Stockton's percentage gain wasn't out of line with norms, doesn't mean that everyone benefitting from those norms wasn't benefiting. So yeah, I'd say in general that we should read these numbers and conclude that home players who are known for getting assists are typically getting some extra credit from the hometown scorekeeper, and while it doesn't make sense to single Stockton out relative to that group because he's benefitting similarly to that group, it does make sense to bring up in a conversation with someone who is an outlier in NOT seeming to get that advantage.

Incidentally, I'm all for discussing how Nash's change in play on the road might have caused to happen, but the sheer outlierness of it makes me skeptical. Which is more likely: That among all-time great point guards, Nash is the one who changed how he played on the road in a way completely different from the rest? or, that there are some stickler scorekeepers who simply refuse to give assists out for "iffy" situations? I think it would be a feather in Nash's camp if the former was the truth, but I'm dead sure the latter exists to some degree among scorekeepers and thus that somebody's going to have a stickler as their hometown scorekeeper. It's possible the latter is true but ironically had nothing to do with the Nash situation, but I don't think it's the most likely explanation.

[Owly]

12. There's also the matter that Stockton - like most glamour-assist guys - seemed to get extra assists credited to him at home, while Nash is the rare example of a guy who seems to have a stingy hometown scorekeeper.

So first of course we have to say that a difference could be a difference in styles of play home/road or luck .... not necessarily on scorekeepers.

That said my impression was that whilst you're right on Nash as huge outlier in getting more raw road assists, Stockton is middle of the pack (more home as is typical, teams being better at home, but near the middle). I think STATs inc had an article looking at this too mid career and with Stockton as the primary focus looking at a couple of years and concluded he wasn't (didn't look good for Mark Price iirc).

According to one Excel I did (a few years ago) looking presumably at players with a certain number of assists (originally said pgs but did LeBron too) crude ratio of home to road so no accounting for team's road resilience so teams with a strong homecourt (mainly Denver, but maybe Utah) are getting hurt a touch too much versus a fairer test ... Stockton ranked 9 of 19. Nash is the outlier 19th. Andre Miller, Tim Hardaway, Bogues were the top 3. Nash, James, Payton bottom 3.

If scorekeepers were inflating Stockton I'm not sure there's evidence that it was done at home, though I may be proved incorrect by deeper analysis.

You're right that we don't know for sure that it's about the scorekeepers in the case of an individual player - that it could be something else pertaining to a change in playing tendency on the road - however:

1. I think it's a pretty well established thing that guys' whose reputations are made by certain stats tend to get the benefit of the doubt in those stats by those who are "on their side". A classic example is the "who gets credit for the rebound?" debate on plays where one guy touches it first but another actually gains possession. Both deserve some credit, but it can't be split in the box score, so the scorekeeper has to make a decision, and it's natural to give the nod to the guy who plays the "rebounding" role.

2. We've seen how extreme assists in particular can get inflated.

Partly because I disagreed with the blatant stat manipulation (that I did) and partly because I'm a Laker fan, I gave Nick Van Exel like 23 assists one game. If he was vaguely close to a guy making a shot, I found a way to give him an assist. Afterwards, I fully expected someone to talk to me about it. Indeed they did. A senior management guy - "great job Alex, that'll get this game on Sportscenter tomorrow morning!" We (VAN) lost badly, of course.

While rebounds are largely a "There was a rebound, so I must mark one player as getting the rebound, who should it be?" situation, with assists, the scorekeeper is literally deciding whether there was an assist or not, and that gives him more power.

3. Just because Stockton's percentage gain wasn't out of line with norms, doesn't mean that everyone benefitting from those norms wasn't benefiting. So yeah, I'd say in general that we should read these numbers and conclude that home players who are known for getting assists are typically getting some extra credit from the hometown scorekeeper, and while it doesn't make sense to single Stockton out relative to that group because he's benefitting similarly to that group, it does make sense to bring up in a conversation with someone who is an outlier in NOT seeming to get that advantage.

Incidentally, I'm all for discussing how Nash's change in play on the road might have caused to happen, but the sheer outlierness of it makes me skeptical. Which is more likely: That among all-time great point guards, Nash is the one who changed how he played on the road in a way completely different from the rest? or, that there are some stickler scorekeepers who simply refuse to give assists out for "iffy" situations? I think it would be a feather in Nash's camp if the former was the truth, but I'm dead sure the latter exists to some degree among scorekeepers and thus that somebody's going to have a stickler as their hometown scorekeeper. It's possible the latter is true but ironically had nothing to do with the Nash situation, but I don't think it's the most likely explanation.

Just a where I'm at summary. Am aware of the theory. Broadly think it plausible unless/until better evidence. Am aware of the open Vancouver scorekeeper anecdote though as it illustrates it's not necessarily home ...

Would reiterate that those "gains" were in the raw apg not accounting for teams doing better at home. So it's not entirely clear there a gain or benefit to be had there.

It does make sense to highlight Nash in any instance - I would have tempered any suggestion that Stockton particularly benefited, though the language is qualified enough that I couldn't say you were "wrong".

A very superficial glance at some year by-year splits suggests that the "more on the road" tendency was there in Dallas (especially accounting for above team norms) and then it gets bigger in Phoenix. TBH that he's such an outlier (I've seen slight tilts into road-favored by this crude measure on smaller samples, e.g. Eric Murdock, Michael Adams but even then it's marginal. He is an outlier.) would make me think it's more a game change. Consciously or otherwise wanting to get others involved. Especially in that he seems to do it with more than one team. The gap seems to spike after his MVPs (two straight years with a 2+ road advantage) ... could be noise, could be strategy, could be differing pressures (Phx scorekeeper feels scrutiny with possibility of a "unconventional" MVP three-peat, feels pressure to be "whiter than white", road scorekeepers accept he's a "superstar" should get "star" calls).

Certainly assists are fudgable and even within a rigid definition actual value added would vary (the latter like pretty much all stats). I would have thought how many "fudgeable" assist passes you make would matter, but then I/most aren't exactly tracking games tightly so for most players I suppose it wouldn't be hard if you really wanted to do it.

Anyway, that's where I am ...