John Stockton vs Chris Paul all time who you voting?

[BarneyGumble]

Cliff Paul's boss at State Farm is Don Stockton.

Pretty clear who has the bigger swinging trunk.

[Edrees]

Anyone voting CP3 is under 35 years old is my guess. Stockton hands down the better all timer. The guy was a machine.

I agree CP3 might have had a higher peak. But he was always the best player on his team. I think Stockton could’ve had a bigger scoring impact if he didn’t set up Malone and other teammates so much.

I would guess the opposite. I think older guys remember Stockton better for what he wasn't. He wasn't able to score when his team desperately needed him to, outside of the run and gun series vs the warriors. Younger guys see more the crazy big career stats and don't recall his shortcomings as much.

Of course...at the end of the day, it's really about who watches games from the past and who doesn't. If everyone just goes off memory of live games. We don't generally get accurate takes because those games were 30 years ago.

While you make a fair point about memory, a vague memory is still better than voting against a player you have NEVER even seen play at all and thus are not eligible to vote in whatsoever, which is the case for many of the people who take part in these types of polls. Do you trust someone who has a vague memory who might remember Stockton a little better than he was (I'll concede that), or someone who never seen a full game of stockton in their life, short of a few youtube clips?

[A_Fernz23]

CP3. Stockton overrated.

[Asianiac_24]

peak CP3 is easily the better player

[Blame Rasho]

I never thought of Stockton as a mvp level player, maybe if he played in this era he would be viewed differently esp with the length of his shorts. I do respect and in awe of his durability of his playing in his career. Yet his apex was never near some of the best point guards in the nba.

[Nate505]

Anyone voting CP3 is under 35 years old is my guess. Stockton hands down the better all timer. The guy was a machine.

I agree CP3 might have had a higher peak. But he was always the best player on his team. I think Stockton could’ve had a bigger scoring impact if he didn’t set up Malone and other teammates so much.

I would guess the opposite. I think older guys remember Stockton better for what he wasn't. He wasn't able to score when his team desperately needed him to, outside of the run and gun series vs the warriors. Younger guys see more the crazy big career stats and don't recall his shortcomings as much.

While I don't disagree with this general point, the game 6 where the Jazz beat the Rockets was an absolute clinic by Stockton, and he not just scored when his team needed it, he dominated the game completely for the last two minutes when the Jazz were down 8.

Unfortunately, he didn't do that as often as he could/should have, and it's a legit knock against him.

[dhsilv2]

Anyone voting CP3 is under 35 years old is my guess. Stockton hands down the better all timer. The guy was a machine.

I agree CP3 might have had a higher peak. But he was always the best player on his team. I think Stockton could’ve had a bigger scoring impact if he didn’t set up Malone and other teammates so much.

I would guess the opposite. I think older guys remember Stockton better for what he wasn't. He wasn't able to score when his team desperately needed him to, outside of the run and gun series vs the warriors. Younger guys see more the crazy big career stats and don't recall his shortcomings as much.

Of course...at the end of the day, it's really about who watches games from the past and who doesn't. If everyone just goes off memory of live games. We don't generally get accurate takes because those games were 30 years ago.

While you make a fair point about memory, a vague memory is still better than voting against a player you have NEVER even seen play at all and thus are not eligible to vote in whatsoever, which is the case for many of the people who take part in these types of polls. Do you trust someone who has a vague memory who might remember Stockton a little better than he was (I'll concede that), or someone who never seen a full game of stockton in their life, short of a few youtube clips?

It's hard to know how anyone built their view point of a player. The only good method is to watch a lot of games and look at a lot of stats and then do the best you can. But you have to do the two things together. We didn't have that ability in the 80's or 90's. If you were lucky you saw sportcenter show you 30 seconds of the game and a box score. Plus you checked it the next day or two days (west coast games for us east coast guys) and could read the actual box score. This got better in the 90's with the internet but we were limited to the very small box score. Every now and then maybe you got a write up on a game in the paper or again as the internet grew sometimes you saw it online. The ability to really study a player's stats in real time just wasn't there. You then had the playoffs where NBC did some of the greatest introductions in sport's history. Before every game you were told about how great the players were, what legends the legends were and how great these new comers were/are/will be. Then we'd re-enforce everything as the 90's turned to the 00's and ESPN 2 /Classic gave us these hardwood legendary series where you could watch for 30 minutes a documentary full of highlights from Bird, Magic, West, and so on. Nobody lost those games/series, the other team WON them.

Today we see a constant feedback loop of negative talk about players with shockingly little positive talk outside of the absolute apex guys where it's hard to say bad things about them. Even guys like Curry and Jokic with 5 combined MVP's are chastised for their defense. Gone are the days of the media building guys up. But we do have real time data that lets us break down everyone, in real time. We don't have a guy like Mitch Richmond who from 26-32 was making allstar teams...and that allstar game might be the only game you actually see of him because the kings got 1 national game a year and had one short playoff series that entire run! Or you were local.

So to your question, I first off think most people here have gone back and watched stars like Stockton if they weren't old enough to have seen him live. Also think most people here are over 35 if not 40. I think the polls of ages around here are always around the 35-55 demographic is like 75%. But the direct answer is sometimes I actually think we'd get better opinions from a box only review of some of these guys can people who think stats are meaningless and go fully off 30-40 year old memories biased by everything I said above. I don't think we can really talk enough about how influential that era's media was at building up that era vs today's tear everyone down media of today. And just to be clear, I'm well aware writers and radio shows would tear guys apart back then. But that wasn't the overwhelming message when watching a game and then the post game show after (if there was one).

[dhsilv2]

Anyone voting CP3 is under 35 years old is my guess. Stockton hands down the better all timer. The guy was a machine.

I agree CP3 might have had a higher peak. But he was always the best player on his team. I think Stockton could’ve had a bigger scoring impact if he didn’t set up Malone and other teammates so much.

I would guess the opposite. I think older guys remember Stockton better for what he wasn't. He wasn't able to score when his team desperately needed him to, outside of the run and gun series vs the warriors. Younger guys see more the crazy big career stats and don't recall his shortcomings as much.

While I don't disagree with this general point, the game 6 where the Jazz beat the Rockets was an absolute clinic by Stockton, and he not just scored when his team needed it, he dominated the game completely for the last two minutes when the Jazz were down 8.

Unfortunately, he didn't do that as often as he could/should have, and it's a legit knock against him.

When Stockton was on he was amazing. When he was off...he was freaking great. I have zero hate for Stockton, I absolutely loved him.

[bledredwine]

I will never understand why Paul gets rated so highly by some people, especially after so many playoff disappointments, not just in his teams, but in his individual matchup against other PGs. One can point out one or two of Stockton’s, but Paul has several and several games where he disappeared. I made a post asking about this on the PC forum a while back with the series numbers of both him and his matchups included (Chauncey, TP, Westbrook for example) and it quickly sank to the bottom of the page.

Back when Paul was on the Redeem team, I was as big a fan as anyone at the time, but I know when I see a choke or lack of stepping up. There was too much of that for me to rate him near PGs like Magic, Steph, Zeke, and Stockton.

[Edrees]

I would guess the opposite. I think older guys remember Stockton better for what he wasn't. He wasn't able to score when his team desperately needed him to, outside of the run and gun series vs the warriors. Younger guys see more the crazy big career stats and don't recall his shortcomings as much.

Of course...at the end of the day, it's really about who watches games from the past and who doesn't. If everyone just goes off memory of live games. We don't generally get accurate takes because those games were 30 years ago.

While you make a fair point about memory, a vague memory is still better than voting against a player you have NEVER even seen play at all and thus are not eligible to vote in whatsoever, which is the case for many of the people who take part in these types of polls. Do you trust someone who has a vague memory who might remember Stockton a little better than he was (I'll concede that), or someone who never seen a full game of stockton in their life, short of a few youtube clips?

It's hard to know how anyone built their view point of a player. The only good method is to watch a lot of games and look at a lot of stats and then do the best you can. But you have to do the two things together. We didn't have that ability in the 80's or 90's. If you were lucky you saw sportcenter show you 30 seconds of the game and a box score. Plus you checked it the next day or two days (west coast games for us east coast guys) and could read the actual box score. This got better in the 90's with the internet but we were limited to the very small box score. Every now and then maybe you got a write up on a game in the paper or again as the internet grew sometimes you saw it online. The ability to really study a player's stats in real time just wasn't there. You then had the playoffs where NBC did some of the greatest introductions in sport's history. Before every game you were told about how great the players were, what legends the legends were and how great these new comers were/are/will be. Then we'd re-enforce everything as the 90's turned to the 00's and ESPN 2 /Classic gave us these hardwood legendary series where you could watch for 30 minutes a documentary full of highlights from Bird, Magic, West, and so on. Nobody lost those games/series, the other team WON them.

Today we see a constant feedback loop of negative talk about players with shockingly little positive talk outside of the absolute apex guys where it's hard to say bad things about them. Even guys like Curry and Jokic with 5 combined MVP's are chastised for their defense. Gone are the days of the media building guys up. But we do have real time data that lets us break down everyone, in real time. We don't have a guy like Mitch Richmond who from 26-32 was making allstar teams...and that allstar game might be the only game you actually see of him because the kings got 1 national game a year and had one short playoff series that entire run! Or you were local.

So to your question, I first off think most people here have gone back and watched stars like Stockton if they weren't old enough to have seen him live. Also think most people here are over 35 if not 40. I think the polls of ages around here are always around the 35-55 demographic is like 75%. But the direct answer is sometimes I actually think we'd get better opinions from a box only review of some of these guys can people who think stats are meaningless and go fully off 30-40 year old memories biased by everything I said above. I don't think we can really talk enough about how influential that era's media was at building up that era vs today's tear everyone down media of today. And just to be clear, I'm well aware writers and radio shows would tear guys apart back then. But that wasn't the overwhelming message when watching a game and then the post game show after (if there was one).

Fantastic post, really a lot of great points. Gives me a lot to think about, especially about the negative feedback loop on today's players