Son doesn't bounce far from the net

If the kid was trying to escape his famous father's shadow, this was not the way to do it.

Michael Stockton returned to the city where his father became famous, to play the same sport and same position his father played, next door to the gym where his father practiced, just a few miles from the statue that bears his father's likeness.

"I never even thought about it," he shrugs. "This is like another home."

Michael Stockton, the second of John and Nada Stockton's six children, is a freshman point guard for Westminster College. He's a thin (6 feet, 165 pounds), late-blooming, left-handed, pass-first guard (sound familiar?) who shoots from slightly over his shoulder (sound familiar?).

He's also a wonderfully unaffected, normal 18-year-old freshman — if "normal" these days includes courteousness and humility — who lives in the dorms and is uncertain of his major.

Meeting Michael, you won't be able to resist the comparisons. You're looking for his father somewhere in his face, voice, personality and movement, just as you would the son of any acquaintance. Michael is outgoing and affable and has little of his father's wariness with strangers. (Older brother Houston, who looks like his father, has been described by at least one writer as reserved and businesslike, like his father.)

"First and foremost," Westminster coach Tommy Connor begins, "John and Nada did a great job of raising kids with as much normalcy as possible. Michael is his own guy."

As for the kid's game, Connor says, "There are no comparisons that are fair. He's just not on the same level as John as a college player. He and his father have the same perceptions — that he has a chance to be a good player, but he's not there yet. I've seen a lot of improvement in three months."

If you think Michael is weary of the comparisons, of the questions about his father, of his father's fame, of being John Stockton's son, think again. It comes with the territory, the kid says, and he embraces it all.

"I loved it," he says of his father's career.

When he returned to Salt Lake City, he drove past the statue of his father that stands in front of EnergySolutions Arena, adjacent to the street that bears his father's name.

"It's cool seeing that stuff again," says Michael, who moved from Salt Lake City to Spokane four years ago, following his father's retirement.

He kept photos and mementos of his father in his room growing up, like every kid in Salt Lake City at the time. He attended every home game and sometimes practices, when he didn't have school. He tried to learn his father's moves, like other boys. After his father retired, he missed it all, like other boys.