Johnlac1 wrote:"why not even getting out of the west until stockton had become a more diminished player?"
Hello, the LA Showtime Lakers? Even so. Utah came very close to beating peak Lakers in the '88 playoffs. In a seven game conference semi final series Stockton had 29 pts. and 20 assists in game seven.
stockton didn't really become stockton until '88, when he had the game you are referring to. he caught the very end of showtime and then had a pretty open run for a decade in a good but not great West. that's arguably his shining playoff series (i believe he had another very good game in that series), but it didn't start him on a trajectory of always doing that, or really even coming close. also, that jazz team was a 47 win team that almost caught the lakers sleeping, it wasn't some juggernaut jazz denied a title through the misfortune of facing something like the '85 or '87 lakers.
Which leads me to my greatest criticism of Stockton...he simply didn't shoot enough
and that's mine as well. and most people's. as a rockets fan who hated the jazz, i always was relieved that stockton didn't shoot more, as he didn't seem to miss 18 foot pull-ups when he actually decided to take them. instead he'd waste shotclock looking for teammates and giving the defense a chance to recover.
Other posters have cited that taking Harden over Stockton depended on the teammates. With a lot of good scorers, you want Stockton. On a team that needs a top scorer, you want Harden.
that feels like a copout. yes, there might be some fits better than others, but "my team already has all the scoring it needs" is not a common situation. "we need this guy to score 30 and get 8 assists" is a much more common problem in nba history. to tie this in with penbeast's post, he mentioned he wanted a pass first PG. and yet outside of pass first point guards named magic johnson, they don't seem to have the track record of PG/SG/SF scoring/passing offensive dynamo's (i know he included defense, but PG/SG are not exactly high value defensive positions and if the 2018/19 warriors didn't hunt harden relentlessly, he's probably not as bad as his reputation). harden didn't get to set up the 2nd leading scorer in nba history. he had to score like he was the 2nd leading scorer in nba history while getting everybody else all the high value lobs and corner 3's that they needed as opposed to stockton getting to almost exclusively set up teammates, often getting quite a few "rondo assists" in jerry sloan's system. we saw harden play with scorer in brooklyn and for the few moments they actually all got on the court, it was impossible to stop. i feel much less confident that stockton is carrying the 2018 or 2019 rockets to the heights harden did than vice versa.
The Jazz played the Bulls tough in two finals despite losing in six games both times. The Jazz simply didn't have the firepower of the Bulls.
i don't necessarily expect the jazz to have beaten the bulls (well, at least in 1997), but part of that lack of firepower was stockton himself. again, in 1998 over the last 4 games of the series, a very close 6 games series where 5 of the 6 games were decided by 5 points or less, stockton averaged 6.5 ppg on 34/14/50 shooting splits (or 6.8 ppg on 41/22/50 splits in the last 5 games). that's horrendous. if harden did that over 4 high profile playoff games, there would be a thread about it pinned to the top of this board to this day.
Even so, how many finals has Harden been in? One. He choked during the 2011 series against Miami.
So lets not get too exuberant with Harden praise when he's only been in one final where he choked.
would harden be better if the warriors were in the east like the bulls and he got to the 2015, 2018, and 2019 finals? this just feels like a "ringz" argument. even so, harden's finals were when he was the same age as when stockton was a rookie and averaged 6/5 for the season, so i'm not sure how much weight should be put on it.
and your final comment is why i complain about this board's view of harden. his playoff failures seem to make people think they have carte blance to rank him wherever they feel. as if there are no degrees to anything. even regardless of who he is being compared to. yes, harden's not the world's greatest playoff performer, but mostly in comparison to his ridiculous regular season self. if he played as well in the playoffs as in the regular season, we'd practically be comparing him to lebron. but we are comparing him to john stockton, a very poor playoff performer who wasn't even close to harden in the regular season. i said maybe, maybe someone could value longevity enough to put stockton ahead, but penbeast seemed to just straight up take stockton (or at least didn't mention longevity). since most of the stockton votes have come after the initial flurry of posts to start the thread, it's hard to know if they are counting longevity or not, but it seems a very difficult case for stockton without longevity.
again, i'm not sure why harden being the best player on his team is somehow not all that important versus stockton getting to be the 2nd best player on his team for his entire prime. it feels like if harden got to play with a healthy version of kawhi or cp3 for his whole career and then still didn't win, while also not having a 73 win team that added kevin durant in the way.
