Highest reasonable all-time ranking for John Stockton?

[ceiling raiser]

Was searching through past threads, and it looks like we haven't had one of these for him yet.

What do you guys think? What's the highest ranking you can justify for Stockton?

[colts18]

Stockton ranks high if you value the following things

-Big RS sample size over Playoff sample size
-Longevity
-Efficiency
-Consistency and Durability
-RAPM impact numbers
-Believe that PG are key to the offense

Based on that, #10 all-time is reasonable.

[euliss]

I think the highest i'd be ok with would be mid-late teens. I have him somewhere in the mid 20s.

[mischievous]

I'd say 22-23rd. I don't think his case over Wade, Drob and Barkley is all that reasonable, but again that's my opinion.

[mischievous]

Stockton ranks high if you value the following things

-Big RS sample size over Playoff sample size
-Longevity
-Efficiency
-Consistency and Durability
-RAPM impact numbers
-Believe that PG are key to the offense

Based on that, #10 all-time is reasonable.

There is nothing reasonable about Stockton being ranked 10th all time. Even if he excels in those categories you named, he still falls short in others like dominant peak, accolades for example no mvp, no championships, played nearly 2 decades with Malone and only has 2 finals appearences to show for it.

[ceiling raiser]

Stockton ranks high if you value the following things

-Big RS sample size over Playoff sample size
-Longevity
-Efficiency
-Consistency and Durability
-RAPM impact numbers
-Believe that PG are key to the offense

Based on that, #10 all-time is reasonable.

Are you high on his defense?

[colts18]

Stockton ranks high if you value the following things

-Big RS sample size over Playoff sample size
-Longevity
-Efficiency
-Consistency and Durability
-RAPM impact numbers
-Believe that PG are key to the offense

Based on that, #10 all-time is reasonable.

Are you high on his defense?

I'm pretty high on his defense. Wouldn't surprise me if he was a top 3 most impactful PG defender. If he was causing havoc with his steals while being disciplined enough not to get too aggressive, his defensive impact could be tremendous.

[Chicago76]

Stockton ranks high if you value the following things

-Big RS sample size over Playoff sample size
-Longevity
-Efficiency
-Consistency and Durability
-RAPM impact numbers
-Believe that PG are key to the offense

Based on that, #10 all-time is reasonable.

Whoa. To get him anywhere close to #10, you'd need to grossly overestimate the impact of perimeter defense. His was excellent, but we're not talking about all time elite perimeter D, nor is it as impactful as simply very good interior D. You'd also need to value longevity to such a degree that it fails to recognize that dominant seasons are where you really see the probability of a championship increase. To hold the belief that PGs are the key to the offense, you'd also need to overlook that several players rated above him won titles or at least contended without having a classic PG in their starting 5, and in many cases, those players performed many of the key PG functions.

At some point, people need to take a step back and consider whether or not a team would trade X seasons of Bird, Magic, Bryant, etc, knowing before hand their health and productivity, for x+y seasons of Stockton, knowing the same for him. I see zero argument for Stockton over any of the top 13 in the latest RGM 100. Jerry West at #15 is a good benchmark. I don't see a defensive advantage, especially when you consider defensive versatility. West was efficient and high volume. He rebounded and passed well. His offensive game was more versatile. He had good longevity for his era and was one of the very best players in the game until injuries and age caught up to him in his final season. I don't see an argument there either. I might see some interpretation for Stockton is above Erving. It seems a bit crazy, but not too much so.

Lower D, more offensive focused bigs is where I can start to see an argument. If you think Stockton was the best player for the Jazz, because you value the things above more, I can see a case for him over Malone and by extension Nowitzki and Barkley. Moses Malone too. If you give Stockton every possible doubt, I could see him move 10 spots from 25 to 15. Splitting the difference is probably more reasonable though. I'd say #20 +/-2 places is about as high as he can go without people really ridiculing the placement.

[LakersLegacy]

30th is as high as I can reasonable get him. But I think he is lower.

[ceiling raiser]

Stockton ranks high if you value the following things

-Big RS sample size over Playoff sample size
-Longevity
-Efficiency
-Consistency and Durability
-RAPM impact numbers
-Believe that PG are key to the offense

Based on that, #10 all-time is reasonable.

Are you high on his defense?

I'm pretty high on his defense. Wouldn't surprise me if he was a top 3 most impactful PG defender. If he was causing havoc with his steals while being disciplined enough not to get too aggressive, his defensive impact could be tremendous.

Which of Bird, Nash, Bryant, Erving, Barkley would you take Stockton over (I think these are guys you've mentioned as having in your mid teen rankings; if not, just wondering who you feel his peers are)?

[LA Bird]

I don't see him going higher than 16. (Currently have Stockton at 18 and ahead of Malone.)

[ThunderDan9]

Around #20, I guess, but I would rank him somewhat lower. I'm not even convinced that his peak is better than Thomas, Price or Payton.

#10 seems to be way off, as Stockton never was some MVP candidate... so there is no way he could compete with players who were the best players in the league (some of them for multiple seasons), or at least heavy MVP contenders.

[Jaivl]

#1

*drops mic*

Spoiler:

If you really take by hand his RAPM numbers and think that he even improved them on his prime, for 18 years... how isn't that Kareem-tier?

[ReaLiez]

Highest is 20th

[Manuel Calavera]

There's no way him and Malone can both be top 25, or even top 30. You take any two top 30 players and play them together and they most likely win multiple titles. You take two top 30 players who also complement eachothers skillset perfectly and I really doubt they aren't a huge dynasty like the Bulls/Lakers/Celtics. Something isn't right in that equation and someone is getting majorly overrated, and IMO it's not Malone.

[Owly]

With Stockton it depends a lot on your criteria.

If you prioritise longevity and trust WARP way above all other stats you could go very high on him (he's the "all-time" leader in WARP, which starts around 1980, so I guess would be behind Jabbar if that era had the data and was included but likely only Jabbar; and his "peak" or a proxy for this - his top 3 years - is up there with anyone 90s not named Jordan or Robinson, just slightly behind Barkley and Olajuwon by this measure http://www.basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=1196).

Is doing so "reasonable"? Well you couldn't really do it because the WARP era misses swathes of history. In general I'm reticent to trust any one single metric too heavily. But if someone is clear and consistent about what their criteria is, that's what matters most to me.

FWIW, above and beyond the "first all-time" label, what (trusting, heavily weighting) WARP does for a Stockton candidacy is shore up his main "weakness" versus the guys around and above him, a percieved lack of a strong peak.

This isn't where I'd have him, and as before I'd be dubious of anyone trusting any one metric that much (and would probably want to look into WARP a bit more) to see how "credible" I'd think of such a ranking, but I could, I think "get" such a ranking.

There's no way him and Malone can both be top 25, or even top 30. You take any two top 30 players and play them together and they most likely win multiple titles. You take two top 30 players who also complement eachothers skillset perfectly and I really doubt they aren't a huge dynasty like the Bulls/Lakers/Celtics. Something isn't right in that equation and someone is getting majorly overrated, and IMO it's not Malone.

So three fifths of a team's starting lineup is irrelevant?

It's not that there isn't some viability to this line of debate, in terms of team performance versus what might reasonably be expected of players of such rankings. But you'd need to look seriously at title expectations for the teams as a whole, addressing properly how good you consider David Benoit, Thurl Bailey, Adam Keefe, Bryon Russell, Howard Eisley, Greg Ostertag, Blue Edwards, Mike Brown, Antoine Carr et al are.

One should also account for competiton; i.e. if for the majority of your title window you're competing against a team with two top 25 GOAT candidates (including consensus GOAT) and they directly stop you winning two titles, does that make you worse at playing basketball (and make two other top 25 people playing on one team at that time impossible), and are you fine with criteria that weighs so heavily things other than basketball performance. Of course that's only two years, other years they went out in the WC, so one might argue they underperformed. Still, it's done very crudely here.

[Texas Chuck]

I rank him pretty highly. Only PG's I definitely would have above him are Magic, Oscar, and West. And Jason Kidd is the only other guy I might debate ranking above Stockton tho I currently would favor John. Better than Payton, Paul, Nash, Frazier, Thomas, etc.

He looks terrific by any statistical metric. He was seen as great when he was playing (passes the eye test). Played forever, played at a very high level, never missed games. Only real knocks on him are based on revisionist views comparing him to more modern scoring PG's and docking him points for not looking for his own offense more--a criticism I have always found unfair.

[Quotatious]

The highest I could see him being ranked, is 21st, after the following players:

Jordan
Kareem
Russell
LeBron
Shaq
Duncan
Hakeem
Wilt
Magic
Bird
Oscar
KG
Kobe
Dirk
Dr J
West
Robinson
Karl Malone
Moses Malone
Barkley

[colts18]

Which of Bird, Nash, Bryant, Erving, Barkley would you take Stockton over (I think these are guys you've mentioned as having in your mid teen rankings; if not, just wondering who you feel his peers are)?

I don't rank Stockton ahead of them. All I'm saying if you have a consistent philosophy in your rankings and value certain criteria, Stockton is top 10 all-time.

Stockton is #5 all-time in Win Shares.

[Clyde Frazier]

Just took a look at the top 100 project. I started supporting stockton around 23. I valued longevity more than the average voter, and stockton’s durability and consistency really stood out to me. He was voted in at 26, 1 spot after nash. We surprisingly didn’t get a major stockton vs. nash debate simply due to the voting breakdown.

So yeah, highest ranking for stockton to me would be in that 20-23 range.