"Are you sure you want that?" Stockton asked, knowing his passes were not the gentler playground variety.

In the end, Challis looked through thousands of photos — those from the photo session and from Stockton's playing days — and collected about 100 of them. From there, he chose 10 photos to place on a large poster, which he taped to a window in his studio, although he says he still referred to other photos frequently, including one life size.

For Challis, it was the artistic opportunity of a lifetime.

"It's a great project for a sculptor," he explains. "First, because of athletes' builds — they have great muscular definition. It's also a great opportunity for an artist to do a work of a prominent figure and to make something so it can be seen, and this is something that will be seen a lot."

Every Jazz game, he'll have an audience of 19,000 to view his work. How many galleries get that kind of attention?

Attention to detail

Challis went to painstaking efforts for accuracy and detail. He studied anatomy books. He even read a book about wrinkles in clothing. He obtained uniforms (and shoes) worn by Stockton and Malone and frequently tugged on and contorted them in various ways to replicate what they would look like under duress. He also had Stockton pose and play basketball for the cameras without a shirt on and initially created the statue nude before "dressing" it with a uniform.

"It's easier to work with known entities," he explains. "You want the clothes to look like cloth and not a suit of armor, especially when you work with bronze. It's easy for it to look stiff and hard."

He created shorts that flap away from the leg as the statue moves. The striations of the back muscles can be seen through the jersey.

Last week, Miller and his sons, Greg, Steve and Roger, showed up at Challis' studio at the latter's request to check out his work. Noting the musculature, Miller said, "One day Karl told John that his body fat had been measured at 2.7 percent. John just kind of stood there, smirking. Finally, Karl asked him what that was about. John just said, '2.3.' That was his body fat."

Challis studied photos of Stockton's shoes as he made a pass. He noted that the shoe that was in contact with the floor when he stopped to make a pass bulged on the outside and lifted slightly off the floor on the inside. He captured both details in the statue.

"I wanted to convey motion," says the sculptor. "So the shoe is off the floor on the inside. I put (Stockton's) shoe on the floor and tested it.