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

[mdonnelly1989]

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

[falcolombardi]

Nash

[tsherkin]

I have Nash a little higher than Stockton. I don't think there's a huuuuuuuge gap between them in an all-time sense. I think Nash was a little better, and I think the MVPs set him apart a little from Stockton, but there are many things to discuss in Stockton's favor as well, so they end up pretty close.

[Texas Chuck]

I may be the only guy but this is quite clearly Stockton for me. Just a better basketball player and for quite a bit longer. I know Doc blames it on everyone but Nash, but we have to remember he wasn't even good until 26 and not great until 30. And his offensive brilliance it must be acknowledged was built on the backs of two coaches who were willing to completely punt on defense to get more offense on the court. No point guard consistently played such a high percentage of minutes with no offensive liabilities on the court.

Stockton was just good at everything and the only knock people have is he didn't volume score like Nash, but ignore he played in an era where PG's weren't primarily scorers the way they have become. And its odd because the Nash backers tend to be big +/- guys and Stockton grades out incredibly well, so then we ignore impact stats and go back to style preferences.

Nash was a great player. And at his absolute best, he was better than Stockton. But after the top 3 seasons go to Nash the next dozen or more probably belong to Stockton.

[tsherkin]

Stockton was just good at everything and the only knock people have is he didn't volume score like Nash, but ignore he played in an era where PG's weren't primarily scorers the way they have become.

KJ, Tim Hardaway, Mark Price, and Gary Payton all disagree with that premise. There were a number of PG scorers in-era. With respect to Stockton, it's more of an inability to be a more significant scoring threat in the playoffs.

And his offensive brilliance it must be acknowledged was built on the backs of two coaches who were willing to completely punt on defense to get more offense on the court.

Mmmm. And yet, it was a prototype for a lot of modern offense which still functions well defensively. And frankly the Suns had the ability to be better on defense and weren't, but ended up making due.

That said, there are many ways to evaluate players. Peak versus prime is certainly one of them, and respecting Stockton's longevity is also very legit. For a tiny dude, and particularly one who screened as much as he did, him being that kind of iron man was very impressive. Of course, YMMV on how much you respect his post-97 career as relevant to this type of comparison. And in as much as you say Nash wasn't good until he was 26, Stockton wasn't a relevant player until he was 25 himself. And for the remarks about coaching, Stockton had most of his best seasons under Jerry Sloan, a coach whose system very specifically emphasized PGs as well. And again, with respect to the style of play not permitting defense, no, that's not really how that worked. In Stockton's first All-Star season, the Jazz played faster than the Suns ever did with Nash. And that was slow relative to the league of his time (98.0 possessions per game, 22nd of 25 in the league in 89).

Personnel matters, and of course Stockton enjoyed Karl Malone during the entirety of his relevance (indeed, all but his rookie season, when he was an 18 mpg player).

Certainly can't fault you for picking Stockton. He was an amazing player, and I think he suffers a little bit from recollection focusing on his most recent times. 98 forward, he just wasn't the same. Age, the knee surgery, the mileage piling up over a very lengthy and storied career... it's easy to remember him as the Old Man, showing the kids how it's done one last time in 02-03, right? And it's a little different to have seen him when he still had some speed in him and knee health, back at the top of his game. And too, it's easy to remember that he looked helpless against Chicago in the 98 Finals... when, of course, he was already 35, in his 14th season, and facing what was still a very athletic backcourt with a lot of length to contain him. So that affects perception of him as well, and not always fairly so.

[AEnigma]

Stockton was just good at everything and the only knock people have is he didn't volume score like Nash, but ignore he played in an era where PG's weren't primarily scorers the way they have become.

You mean were not scorers like Magic Johnson, Mark Price, Tim Hardaway, Kevin Johnson, Terry Porter, Isiah Thomas, Gary Payton, Rod Strickland, Kenny Anderson… ?

He was a reluctant scorer in his own era, not just relative to the ‘00s.

its odd because the Nash backers tend to be big +/- guys and Stockton grades out incredibly well, so then we ignore impact stats and go back to style preferences.

Lamar Odom grades out incredibly well in plus/minus; are Nash backers being hypocritical by not calling him a top ten power forward? Dikembe Mutombo had some great plus/minus numbers; should I be putting him above Patrick Ewing and Moses Malone?

Nash was a great player. And at his absolute best, he was better than Stockton. But after the top 3 seasons go to Nash the next dozen or more probably belong to Stockton.

Stockton certainly has more longevity, and that can be worth something, but Nash was not restricted to some three year peak. He was pretty much the same player through 2010 as he was in that 2005-07 stretch, and then the surrounding years — less primacy in Dallas, declining scoring in 2011 and 2012 — are not too severely far off either.

[falcolombardi]

I may be the only guy but this is quite clearly Stockton for me. Just a better basketball player and for quite a bit longer. I know Doc blames it on everyone but Nash, but we have to remember he wasn't even good until 26 and not great until 30. And his offensive brilliance it must be acknowledged was built on the backs of two coaches who were willing to completely punt on defense to get more offense on the court. No point guard consistently played such a high percentage of minutes with no offensive liabilities on the court.

Stockton was just good at everything and the only knock people have is he didn't volume score like Nash, but ignore he played in an era where PG's weren't primarily scorers the way they have become. And its odd because the Nash backers tend to be big +/- guys and Stockton grades out incredibly well, so then we ignore impact stats and go back to style preferences.

Nash was a great player. And at his absolute best, he was better than Stockton. But after the top 3 seasons go to Nash the next dozen or more probably belong to Stockton.

Lets mention that the only defensive liability they played for his offense (unless you see nash as a clear liability himself which is reasonable although i think overstated) is stoudamire

They missed him for a full season, replaced him with a more defensive big and throttled along in 2006

Lets also mention that the suns were not awful offensively the way the 80's nuggets were all offense. They had an average~ defense. Otherwise they couldnt have been a contender like they were

Lets also mention that while stoudamire was a great offensive player....he is not exactly some unfair "sidekick" to have

curry got durant for a few years
magic had kareem and worthy
lebron got some years of prime wade/davis
bird had mchale
Stockton himself played with karl malone

Other players like stockton played with great offensive talent too without needing to sacrifice defense to do so as their offensive co-stars were good defenders rather than weak ones

Arguably all of those guys are better offensive players than stoudamire while simultaneously being better defenders. Having amare is not some offensive advantage over karl malone

And then i dont think someone like marion is a better offensive player (purely offense hornacek may be better) than hornacek. Of course suns had better offensive talent after their top 3's but we are not talking about some huge gap between their overall rosters

And suns had better offense results than utah by a fair margin

[tsherkin]

Stockton was just good at everything and the only knock people have is he didn't volume score like Nash, but ignore he played in an era where PG's weren't primarily scorers the way they have become.

You mean were not scorers like Magic Johnson, Mark Price, Tim Hardaway, Kevin Johnson, Terry Porter, Isiah Thomas, Gary Payton, Rod Strickland, Kenny Anderson… ?

Magic's size sort of eliminates him from that discussion, though. I think Tex was talking about small guards. Forgot about Porter. Isiah is another good example, as well as Strickland and Kenny, yes.

Stockton was indeed a reluctant scorer, and he lacked some of the other traits Nash exhibited. But to be fair, he showcased some others which were laudable. In deference to Chuck's defense of Stockton, not everyone needs to be like a 20+ ppg scorer through the RS, and we don't need to judge every player on their ability to act as a focal scoring threat.

For me, it was more that he didn't have an extra "step up" gear. Utah routinely lacked scoring punch behind Malone, even with Jeff Malone or an older Jeff Hornacek, and neither Stockton nor Hornacek were spectacular against Chicago (though as I noted earlier, that's perhaps a little late in their careers to really be griefing them). Tough call. To me, Stockton seemed best-suited as the #3 on a team, with two higher-volume scorers. And I think dropping some of his volume playmaking and adding in a little more from an isolation wing would have been a better pathway for Utah's offense, personally, but Sloan was vehemently against that.

falco has handled some of the rest. Phoenix was the 17th-ranked defense in 2005, 16th the year after, 13th in 2007, 16th in 08, 26th in 09 with Shaq and 23rd in 2010. In their heyday, they weren't good defensively, but they were not abhorrent for most of it, and along the way, they made the WCFs 3 times and really ought to have made it at least once more (in 2007).

[Texas Chuck]

I didn't say there were no PG's who could score. But the fact that you name just a handful whereas today you basically can't be a starting PG without being a primary scoring threat kinda proves my point. It was a different time.

And no STAT wasn't the only poor defensive player he played with. Certainly he played with others in Phoenix and a whole bunch of them in Dallas. And its important we remember Nash was a very poor defender. I know his defenders here have tried to paint a different picture, but he was a real weak spot.



And yeah tsherkin, I compare Deke quite favorable to Ewing actually. But no need for me to get pounded on a 2nd time itt. I'm still taking my Nash lumps.

[VanWest82]

And his offensive brilliance it must be acknowledged was built on the backs of two coaches who were willing to completely punt on defense to get more offense on the court.

What's the evidence here? It's not like the Mavs or Suns were selling out for offensive rebounds. Surely we've long since moved past the discussion about how playing fast = offense.

You could make the case that the early 00s Mavs prioritized offensive players over two way players - that's fair. It's harder to make that case for his Suns tenure unless you're blaming Nash for Stat.

In any event, Nash's prime was characterized by MDA and Gentry realizing what they had in Nash and giving him the keys rather than contraining him to a system. For that reason, I've never bought the argument that Nash was somehow made by his coaches; more like the other way around.

I'm fine if someone wants to make the Stockton argument around his longevity and two way play. The coaching argument is nonsense. It'd be like claiming Lebron needed specific coaching to unlock his offensive greatness instead of his coaches realizing they needed to just GTFO of the way..

[iggymcfrack]

With Stockton, we only have impact metrics for the very latter part of his career when even most all-time players are lucky to be league average and he was incredible. For the overall RAPM sample from 1997-2014, Stockton ranks 10th overall between Dirk and Chris Paul even though the years sampled for him are ages 34-40. In 2001, at age 38 he ranked 3rd in the league in RAPM. What stands out is that even late in his career, Stockton ranked as one of the very best defensive guards in the league. It turns out that maybe being the all-time steals king takes some skills and has some major impact. I have Stockton as one of the 3 best defensive PGs of all-time along with CP3 and Payton. Nash was obviously an offensive supernova in his prime, but I don't think you can compare him having a tremendous stretch in Phoenix only to Stockton being awesome for 15-16 years in a row on both ends of the floor.

[Colbinii]

A comparison as old as time

[iggymcfrack]

And his offensive brilliance it must be acknowledged was built on the backs of two coaches who were willing to completely punt on defense to get more offense on the court.

What's the evidence here? It's not like the Mavs or Suns were selling out for offensive rebounds. Surely we've long since moved past the discussion about how playing fast = offense.

You could make the case that the early 00s Mavs prioritized offensive players over two way players - that's fair. It's harder to make that case for his Suns tenure unless you're blaming Nash for Stat.

In any event, Nash's prime was characterized by MDA and Gentry realizing what they had in Nash and giving him the keys rather than contraining him to a system. For that reason, I've never bought the argument that Nash was somehow made by his coaches; more like the other way around.

I'm fine if someone wants to make the Stockton argument around his longevity and two way play. The coaching argument is nonsense. It'd be like claiming Lebron needed specific coaching to unlock his offensive greatness instead of his coaches realizing they needed to just GTFO of the way..

Nash's impact numbers were very unimpressive in Dallas. The Mavs were better with him on the bench than on the floor his last season there. No one was considering him even a top 10 player until he went to Phoenix. And then his first season with the Lakers was massively disappointing too. It was really only a special confluence with D'Antoni and the Phoenix system that caused him to be an all-time point guard. He had incredible talent too to be so successful there and I still have him top 30 all-time, but he's one of the most system-dependent stars of all-time.

[falcolombardi]

And his offensive brilliance it must be acknowledged was built on the backs of two coaches who were willing to completely punt on defense to get more offense on the court.

What's the evidence here? It's not like the Mavs or Suns were selling out for offensive rebounds. Surely we've long since moved past the discussion about how playing fast = offense.

You could make the case that the early 00s Mavs prioritized offensive players over two way players - that's fair. It's harder to make that case for his Suns tenure unless you're blaming Nash for Stat.

In any event, Nash's prime was characterized by MDA and Gentry realizing what they had in Nash and giving him the keys rather than contraining him to a system. For that reason, I've never bought the argument that Nash was somehow made by his coaches; more like the other way around.

I'm fine if someone wants to make the Stockton argument around his longevity and two way play. The coaching argument is nonsense. It'd be like claiming Lebron needed specific coaching to unlock his offensive greatness instead of his coaches realizing they needed to just GTFO of the way..

Nash's impact numbers were very unimpressive in Dallas. The Mavs were better with him on the bench than on the floor his last season there. No one was considering him even a top 10 player until he went to Phoenix. And then his first season with the Lakers was massively disappointing too. It was really only a special confluence with D'Antoni and the Phoenix system that caused him to be an all-time point guard. He had incredible talent too to be so successful there and I still have him top 30 all-time, but he's one of the most system-dependent stars of all-time.

Nash was not a system guy. Dude literally was one of the most "on the move" improvisers/decision makers out there.

He was one of the most constantly moving on ball players out there to the degree he is like an on-ball version of reggie miller. Always pushing the pace, getting in and out of the paint, etc always trying to generate some advantages with his dribble until he shots, drives or passes

The suns system was nash system. Everyone else learned to react to the chaos he generated and the advantages this provided and to make quick decisions with cuts or after catching the ball as a sort of reverse motion system

You cannot run that dynamic suns offense with chris paul or john stockton who incresible as they are were much more methodical and "slow it down and execute" guys

[SickMother]

I have them in the same PG tier with a preference for Stockton based mostly on his defense and longevity.

I've got Nash with ten relevant seasons, 2001-10...
RS: 21.5 PER | .613 TS% | .185 WS/48 | 120 ORtg | 111 DRtg | 11.5 DWS | -1.4 DBPM
PO: 20.0 PER | .587 TS% | .137 WS/48 | 116 ORtg | 114 DRtg | 0.1 DWS | -1.5 DBPM

Compare that to Stockton who I've got with fifteen relevant seasons, 1988-2002...
RS: 22.6 PER | .615 TS% | .218 WS/48 | 122 ORtg | 104 DRtg | 53.9 DWS | 1.9 DBPM
PO: 20.2 PER | .565 TS% | .163 WS/48 | 116 ORtg | 107 DRtg | 6.5 DWS | 1.6 DBPM

[tsherkin]

And yeah tsherkin, I compare Deke quite favorable to Ewing actually. But no need for me to get pounded on a 2nd time itt. I'm still taking my Nash lumps.

I actually kind of see this one, tbh. Mutombo knew his role and filled it very, very well. Ewing, I think he was asked to extend himself beyond what made sense. He was initially projected as more of a Bill Russell type player but they asked him to score more and I don't think that was a really great idea. And I don't really see a lot of high-end impact from him as an offensive focus. So yeah, I can actually see that argument, heh.

[JordansBulls]

Stockton, not much a Nash fan. Nash became good once he left Dirk it seems.

[VanWest82]

Nash's impact numbers were very unimpressive in Dallas. The Mavs were better with him on the bench than on the floor his last season there. No one was considering him even a top 10 player until he went to Phoenix. And then his first season with the Lakers was massively disappointing too. It was really only a special confluence with D'Antoni and the Phoenix system that caused him to be an all-time point guard. He had incredible talent too to be so successful there and I still have him top 30 all-time, but he's one of the most system-dependent stars of all-time.

This is exactly the kind of post where it's easy to spot the agenda driven posters who have no idea what they're talking about.

Nash - the system dependent player - as proven by the years he broke his back and broken his leg. Yeah, sure. Let's just ignore his healthy years in Phoenix where he was given the ball and free reign to run the team as he best saw fit and somehow discount that as him being a "system player." Give me a break.

[70sFan]

I think it's closer than some may realize, although I do prefer Nash peak more than Stockton's longevity. Neither one was a system player by the way

[penbeast0]

I have Stockton over Nash for peak, prime, and total career but then I value defense a lot and am impressed at some of the offenses he produced with the likes of Mark Eaton/Felton Spencer/Mark Olberding at C and David Benoit/Byron Russell; as impressed as I am with the incredible offenses Nash produced in Phoenix with the likes of Gortat/Frye/Dudley as his bigs. Hard to pick between them offensively for me with a slight edge to Nash. Stockton was the master of getting everyone the ball exactly where they wanted it and in a position to excel and seemed to make less mistakes, he also was one of the best pick setting guards which isn't measured in box scores well but can help an offense work. Nash created more out of nothing and scored a bit more, lthough the scoring edge is overrated; prime Stockton would get you close to 15 a game, Nash around 18, not a huge difference and Stockton was as efficient. Both played in PG friendly systems during their prime; both were the real deal.

While offense was close though, Stockton pulls away on the defensive side and with his ironman ability. He was an excellent team defender, average man defender; Nash was an average team defender, poor man defender. The ironman edge is pretty impressive too; Nash wasn't injury prone but Stockton was just unreal in that respect.