Utah's John Stockton - `The Largent Of The NBA'

Karl Malone might deliver the mail for the Utah Jazz, but John Stockton sorts it.

Stockton, the nice kid from Spokane who once was a ballboy for the NBA-champion Sonics of another era during a game they played in his hometown, is exactly what the Sonics of this era need.

And there was a time when he would have been glad to oblige. And a time when they had their shot at him.

It was in the 1984 draft, but the Sonics took the rights to Tim McCormick. Now they couldn't trade enough Barry Ackerley billboards, bucks or even basketball players to get the Utah Jazz to part with Stockton.

``He's the Steve Largent of the NBA,'' said Bob Whitsitt, the Sonics' president, ``except that it won't take 14 years for the fans to realize it; they realize it right now.''

The comparisons with Largent are valid and appropriate. Stockton, in his fifth season, has become the first player in NBA history to be credited for more than 1,000 assists two years in a row and is on a pace this season to do it again.

He led the league in assists and steals last season and is ahead in both categories again. In a game against the New York Knicks, he got 27 assists, the most credited a visiting player in NBA history.

In another game, he brought his team from eight points behind in the final seconds to a victory over the Chicago Bulls by stealing the ball from Michael Jordan on one play and then taking a pass and scoring over Jordan for the winning basket.

``He's a great player,'' said his coach, Jerry Sloan, last night, ``but he is also a great human being, which is more important. You can be a great player for 10 years; you can be a great human being for your entire life.''

Bernie Bickerstaff is trying to replicate Stockton with the Sonics, last night giving 5-foot-11 Avery Johnson a chance at point guard where Nate McMillan has failed to provide the direction, the penetration, the fire a team needs to win in the NBA.

``I saw some of Stockton in Avery,'' said Bickerstaff, ``that kind of smartness and understanding on the court.

``But Stockton is truly one of the league's best. He controls a basketball game. Period. He puts people where they don't have to create, all they have to do is deliver.''

As the Jazz pulled away from Seattle last night en route to a 119-108 victory, Stockton had a hand in five of his team's final seven baskets, either scoring or assisting on them.

He also broke and beat the vaunted Seattle press, stepping through and around a double team that included the irrepressible Xavier McDaniel. Repeatedly, Stockton found the open man, usually Malone, and the Jazz worked the ball into the basket for relatively easy scores.

Because he is 6-1, 175 pounds and looks like any other kid who grew up playing Catholic Youth Organization basketball - frankly, he looks like a gym rat - and because he was no great shakes as a collegian, and because he plays in Utah, we forget sometimes just how exquisite a player Stockton is.

The Jazz found out one night in November when Stockton couldn't play. He had a sprained ankle.

``It was the first game I've ever missed,'' he said last night as his older brother sat next to him in the Utah locker room.

``I mean, I'd never missed a game before, grade school, high school, college and in the NBA.'' He had played 418 consecutive games since joining the Jazz.

The chore seemed simple enough for Utah, even without Stockton. The opponent was the Orlando Magic, an expansion team, at a home game in Salt Lake City.

``When you've depended on one person for so long and for so much,'' said Sloan, ``there is some adjusting to do.''

The Jazz lost by 24 to the Magic that night. And lost again three nights later, also at home, to the Los Angeles Lakers.

Stockton came back two nights after that and led his team to a 37-point victory over the New Jersey Nets.

While Stockton led Gonzaga University in scoring and assists as a senior and was named the West Coast Athletic Conference MVP, he was thought to be a third- or fourth-round draft choice in 1984. He admitted as much.

But a Utah scout, former University of Utah coach Jack Gardner, saw in Stockton unique qualities.

Gardner saw that Stockton ``saw the entire floor.'' That he had quick hands and a quick mind, enabling him to pass the ball accurately when he had it, and steal it back when he didn't.

Frank Layden, the Utah coach, and his son, Scott, the team's talent scout, came to Seattle for the NCAA Final Four in 1984 and saw Stockton light up an all-star game played at Edmundson Pavilion.

Stockton's stock continued to rise when he was the last player cut by Bobby Knight as the Indiana coach put together the 1984 Olympic team.

While 1984 is best remembered as the draft in which the Chicago Bulls got Jordan with the third pick, the Jazz taking Stockton No. 16 in the first round was not much less important to that franchise.

``We didn't know what we had until we got him,'' admitted Layden. ``We knew he was good - that's why we drafted him - but we didn't know he was that good.''

As a point guard, Stockton is with a group just behind the Lakers' Magic Johnson, even though he has more assists and steals.