With respect to the whole Stockton-98 thing... It's very difficult to properly examine his impact in that time period because the 94 addition of Hornacek really changed their basic ability to compete. It was a HUGE move for them until they faced the Bulls, when neither Stockton nor Horny could really do much of anything worth mentioning against Chicago's defense on a consistent basis (Stockton more understandably in 98, of course).
But it behooves me to mention, even though I'm not generally a fan of how he is commonly portrayed, that the Jazz were a 62 win team on the season... and 51-13 when he played (~ .797, or 65-win paced).
That means that they were 11-7 without him (.611, or 50-win paced).
That IS a pretty significant difference. It's SSS, but the drop-off is considerable in the team's ability to win games. They were doing really, really well, and then without him, they were merely good. They remained the best offense in the league despite him missing 18 games, and perhaps that's where your argument holds more weight? But even still, even if you suppose that the team was good enough to keep trundling along in his absence, and account for the fact that any team losing a significant player should (in theory) tail off, I don't really see how looking at 98 is a good way to diminish Stockton. Utah was obviously poorer for his absence and it showed in the very W/L you're discussing.
Hornacek remains the biggest problem with looking at Stockton's declining minutes as a major point of issue with his primacy. From 89-97, Stockton averaged 36.4 minutes per game; he played LESS than that in 93, and then after 94 (95, 96 and 97)... but Hornacek was added for the last 27 games of the 93-94 season, so there's obvious overlap, and a simple explanation for him "only" playing around 35 mpg (never under 35 mpg in those last 3 seasons), and then his injury explains 98... and even WITH Hornacek, the team is a lot worse without him.
For a different look, let's peek at Utah's team ORTG's from 89-98:
Code: Select all
89 106.6
90 110.3
91 108.6
92 112.2
93 109.6
94 108.6
95 114.3
96 113.3
97 113.6
98 112.7
What you see as a decline period in Stockton's offensive output and minutes appears to be more of a synergy with Hornacek upon his arrival. Stockton remained the primary ball-handler, but as the team leaped into the shortened-3 era with a really wicked real 3pt shooter who happened to also be devastating at catch-and-shoot from closer ranges, the team offense flew off like crazy... and then in 98, they were still able to be dominant despite the absence of Stockton for a quarter of the season or so because Hornacek was a nasty shooter who ended the season 22/50 from 3 over the final 37 games of the season. He had an ORTG between 123 and 127 in each of the last 3 months of the season. He was obviously better with John on the floor.
But without him in November for 14 games? Season-high 16.8 ppg, 59.7% TS and a 123 ORTG. Horny filled in during Stockton's absence. But even then, he wasn't as good as he would later be once Stockton returned. So you see it in a given player's performance, you see it in the record of how the games actually went. Let's look to see if Malone was affected. Malone's November: 25.9 ppg (under his seasonal 27.0), 113 ORTG (6-11 points lower than his monthly ratings from January onwards), 60.3% TS (lower than all but one month from January to the end of the season, though not by too much). Again,. he played really well over an extended absence from Stockton because he was awesome... but he was better with him, which just makes sense.
Utah was 9-5 in that month, or paced for around 53 wins. Again, small sample, but what we're talking about is the team dramatically underperforming in his absence. That's not a telling blow for the idea that he wasn't a large impact player. I get that you aren't trying to say they were better off without him, but with his removal exercising so large an impact on their ability to win and in general the minutes difference not being huge over the given period we are discussing, I'm not really seeing anything except that the ultra extreme of his volume production was maybe not ideal for the team in the same way that the volume scoring of a guy like Ewing wasn't the greatest strategy from the standpoint of tactical predictability. Utah's offense obviously got a lot better once they had Hornacek... but who was passing to Horny? It was still Stockton advancing the ball up the backcourt, crossing the timeline and executing the initial portions of the offense most of the time. Malone got to be more effective as a playmaker as he aged and having dual PnR initiators certainly helped the Jazz, but that's not so much a knock on Stockton's primacy as it is an indicator that a three-man game is a little but more balanced and leaves a defense less able to key in on a primary playmaker quite as readily.
89-94, Stockton averaged 16.3 ppg and 13.4 apg on 11.3 FGA/g in 36.9 mpg. From 95-97, he averaged 14.6 ppg and 11.3 apg on 9.6 FGA/g in 35.3 mpg.
So he played a little less, shot a little less but was still a huge volume playmaker. Keep in mind that someone like Magic, whom you referenced earlier, exercised his primacy to a lesser degree as a volume playmaker and more as a scorer. Magic averaged 13.2 FGA/g on his career, which is higher than Stockton's 89-94 run (his highest-scoring period), and only hit or passed 13 apg once in his career due to his balance of shooting and passing. Stockton hit or passed 13 apg in 5 consecutive seasons from 88-92 and never took 12 FGA/g on a season once in that span. His career-high is 11.9 FGA/g, whereas Magic has 9 seasons over that mark.
I think the betterment of the Jazz offense came less from reducing Stockton's total primacy and more from giving him a better second choice to pass to when Malone wasn't the ideal option out of the set they'd run. He was still in control of where the ball went a lot of the time, but he had a little more freedom to move the ball instead of shoot. Primacy must refer to not only the choice to shoot, but the ability to make a play for others when it's being discussed in context of a guy running an offense, no? The Jazz were hugely effective in the period we're discussing, but I've not seen mention of the efficiency-altering rules change I mentioned above, and that makes me sort of question the idea that Stockton's primacy reduction (if that was even in effect) was actually responsible for the Jazz's offensive leap forward. Do keep in mind, for example, that we saw the Jazz at nearly 1998 levels of offensive success in 92 as well and that they were a 54- to 55-win team from 90-92. That they would be better with the addition of the best third player they'd ever enjoyed offensively really shouldn't come as a surprise, should it? We are talking about an All-Star PG and an ATG shooter, after all.
Perhaps I'm rambling, but I don't really see the primacy argument as the right way to describe that situation. There are too many factors involved in Utah's offensive and record surge to simply say that it was the result of Stockton being less involved... because he wasn't, really. The possessions ended in him not taking a shot quite as often, or sometimes him not getting the assist as often, but he was still initiating. If Malone kicks it to the corner for a corner 3 from Hornacek and Horny is more successful at it than, say, Darrell Griffith used to be in the same set, is that really a huge loss for Stockton in terms of the control he exercised over the same possession he used to have before? Not so much, IMO. Maybe before, the Jazz reset and he runs another set and makes the pass to whomever else and that shot goes in. Yay. Stockton's primacy, greater?
The other thing is:
PER100
89-94: 22.1 PTS, 18.2 AST, 15.4 FGA
95-97: 21.9 PTS, 17.0 AST, 14.4 FGA
So first we see no appreciable drop in scoring output despite 1 less FGA per 100 possessions, coupled with highly similar assist output. The other factor of note?
Utah's pace.
89-94: ~ 95.8
95-97: 90.9
98: 89.2
So looking at per-game averages is a somewhat limited perspective, because the league was slowing down considerably. In 95, the Jazz were a middle-of-the-pack team ITO pace (16th/27), but in 96, 97 and 98? 25th of 29, 17th of 29 and 21st of 29, and of course the raw pace was much, much slower.
That's why I think that just aggregating PTS and ASTS, factoring in MPG, that process doesn't accurately reflect what was actually going on for the Jazz as a squad. Stockton was very much involved as a primary player while he was healthy. His PER100 stats don't look very different, save for shooting less as some shots were distributed to Hornacek... which makes sense, given that he was the talent they'd been missing to really stand out with the sort of 60-win mark success they ultimately achieved with another AS-level player on their squad. Is that a primacy issue? Not so much IMO, because Stockton's production was basically the same, there were just fewer possessions in which to accrue stats and he was playing 1 or 2 fewer minutes per game as he entered into his mid-30s, which is understandable. If they'd had Hornacek instead of Jeff Malone alongside a moderately healthy Mark Eaton in the very late 80s and early 90s, they'd have won more games then and Stockton's statisticaly output would have similarly reflected huge primacy, don't you think?
