Passing On Praise -- Although John Stockton Would Rather Avoid The Publicity, His Hard Work And Unselfishness Earn Him The Opportunity To Break The NBA's Career Assist Record And Earn The Jazz A Chance To Contend.

The interview, by itself, was a special occasion, agreed to only because the record John Stockton is about to break is monumental. Getting Stockton to talk is not a problem. The hard part is getting him into the chair.

If he could pass off the task to a Utah Jazz teammate, he would. But no teammate is a few games away from breaking Magic Johnson's NBA record for career assists.

As Stockton sees it, he gets paid millions of dollars to give interviews. He plays basketball for free.

"The other stuff is the work part of it," said Stockton, who enters tonight's game against the SuperSonics with 9,868 assists, 53 shy of Johnson's total. "The games, though, that's where most of your energy goes, if not all of it. That's the fun part."

Though in his case it's a quiet kind of fun. The catch phrases attached to Stockton are all of the same variety: humble, down-to-earth, unselfish. He is, in a sentence, what America loves.

He is perceived as undersized (6 feet 1, 175 pounds) and an underdog. He has shortcomings but prevails anyway. He is great, but doesn't know it. As the son of a tavern keeper, he is thought of as a regular guy. And he works hard. Along with honesty and pride, hard work is the ethic Americans seem to worship the most.

In the game of basketball, coaches preach it but say they don't often see it. Johnson complained bitterly about it last season during his short stint as head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. But he is a great fan of Stockton's.

"John is a workaholic, and that's what we're missing now," Johnson said. "If more guys had John Stockton's attitude, there would be more skilled players. We've got a lot of guys who think they're superstars, but they're not."

Said Sonic Coach George Karl, who coached Stockton in last season's All-Star Game: "He was the most pleasurable player to coach, because of his approach to the game, his enthusiasm. He's totally team. Stockton is, right now, as good as any point guard that has played the game."

Stockton has missed only four games in his 11-year career, all of them during the 1989-1990 season. Some amount of luck has kept him free of major injuries. The rest is the result of sheer desire.

"You don't get this opportunity many times in life to compete against the best in the world every night," he said. "I certainly didn't expect to have 10 or 11 years of chances at it, so I don't want to take that for granted. I don't like to miss games."

At 32, Stockton still considers playing in the NBA a privilege. It goes back to childhood, days growing up in Spokane - where he attended Gonzaga Prep and would eventually be a star at Gonzaga University - the days of being the neighborhood twerp, the little kid always hanging around the basketball court "hoping that someone would pick me."

Stockton would follow his brother Steve, four years older, to pickup games. There, he learned the best way to get picked for another game was to pass the ball. His game evolved around that philosophy.

Aided by unusually large hands for someone his size, he is perhaps the best in the game at passing, one-handed, off the dribble. Those passes come as softly as balloons and as quickly as darts. His ability to anticipate is so refined, it almost qualifies as a sixth sense.

Yet Stockton never thought he'd stick around the NBA this long.

"I had little or no expectations coming in," said Stockton, the 16th player taken in the 1984 draft. "I was thrilled when I was drafted in the first round because that meant I was going to be given a full year's chance to make the team. Everything after that has kind of been gravy."

Gravy with a few lumps in the form of playoff losses. Blessed with one of the game's greatest tandems - Stockton and power forward Karl Malone - the Jazz have yet to play for an NBA championship. They have twice lost in the Western Conference finals, most recently last season to the Houston Rockets.

But after years of staying close, they finally seem ready to mount a championship campaign. They are one of the NBA's surprises, leaders of the Midwest Division.

Utah arrives at the Tacoma Dome tonight having won 14 in a row on the road - two short of the NBA record - and 10 straight overall.

"The biggest difference is the young guys have gotten better," Stockton said. "The David Benoits, the Byron Russells, Adam Keefe, Felton Spencer before he got hurt. They've made us tick. And having Jeff Hornacek for a whole year and also adding Antoine Carr, those were big pick-ups for us."

Johnson said the Jazz are deeper than they've ever been.

"They finally added some athletes who can do more than just one thing," he said. "And they've been winning on the road, which they never could do before, so that's given them that added confidence they need when the playoffs start."

The Jazz have become viable contenders late for Stockton and Malone, 31. The other greats of their generation - Johnson, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas - have won championships and retired. Stockton and Malone are not just fighting other teams, but they are also fighting time.

In some ways, time already has nudged Stockton aside. In today's playground game, when kids pick the basketball heroes they want to be, few are likely to say, "I'm John Stockton." They haven't seen Stockton in a sneaker commercial or on MTV.

In balloting for this year's All-Star Game, Stockton is fifth, behind Latrell Sprewell, Dan Majerle, Tim Hardaway and a rookie, Jason Kidd.

Though Stockton has played in every All-Star Game since 1988, he has been voted a starter only once, in 1993, when the game was held in Salt Lake City and he and Malone were named co-MVPs.

"He's not a flashy guy and he plays for Utah," said Mark Kelly, in charge of publicity for the Jazz. "Realistically, it works hand-in-hand. But I know personally he could not care less. He's a sandlot kid."

Late in his career, when Johnson broke Oscar Robertson's record of 9,887 assists, he graciously acknowledged the honor and then discounted it, predicting it would soon be broken by Stockton.

For his part, Stockton is having trouble finding great importance in the record he will soon have.

"Right now, thinking about it, I don't know if it will mean that much," he said. "It's going to happen right in the middle of a game when we need a victory, and that's got to be our focus.

"People tell me it will mean a lot after I retire, maybe for my kids, whatever. But right now to me, it's just a stat, something to talk about."

------------------------------------------. NBA assist leaders. . (Regular season). . . . Magic Johnson 9,921. . . Oscar Robertson 9,887. . . John Stockton 9,868. . . Isiah Thomas 9,061. . . Maurice Cheeks 7,392. . --------------------------------------------. Stockton's record. . . Season Assists Avg. . 1984-'85 415 5.1. . 1985-'86 610 7.4. . 1986-'87 670 8.2. . 1987-'88 1,128 13.8. . 1988-'89 1,118 13.6. . 1989-'90 1,134 14.5#. . 1990-'91 1,164 # 14.2. . 1991-'92 1,126 13.7. . 1992-'93 987 12.0. . 1993-'94 1,031 12.6. . 1994-'95 485 12.2. . .

# NBA season record.