Utah Jazz: Call to the Hall — Stockton and Sloan named to Hall of Fame

Finishing a dazzling career as the NBA's all-time assists leader certainly played a huge role in why John Stockton was voted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

How fitting. In classic Stockton style, the legendary Jazz point guard dished out praise like oh-so-many crisply delivered passes to teammates after he was introduced — along with his old coach, Jerry Sloan, Bulls star Michael Jordan, Spurs great David Robinson and Rutgers women's coach C. Vivian Stringer — as part of the Hall's Class of 2009 on Monday in Detroit.

Stockton finished his 19-year Jazz journey with a mind-boggling, NBA-record 15,806 assists, but he says the biggest ones, the ones that really made this career-crowning honor possible, never ended up in the boxscores or statistics.

The biggest assists didn't go to Karl Malone. Nope. According to Stockton, they came to him from influential people who surrounded and supported the gutsy guard over the years from Washington to Utah.

"The first thought to come to mind when I heard the announcement," Stockton said, "were all the people that had a part in it, at least in my life — the teammates, the coaches, the teachers, my parents, my family, worthy opponents.

"Everybody's had a hand in helping me become a better person, better athlete. For somebody to actually want to honor that is pretty special to me."

Also of special significance for Stockton is the fact that he'll be inducted into the Hall of Fame with his longtime coach. Sloan was unable to attend the announcement ceremony, traditionally held in conjunction with the Final Four, because he was traveling with the Jazz.

"He's not only been my coach and mentor," Stockton said. "But he's become a great friend over the years."

Now they've become fellow Hall of Famers together, a "tremendous honor" Sloan said from New Orleans on Sunday, each having earned his way into the Springfield, Mass., museum on their first ballots. Next year, they'll be joined, no doubt, by Malone, who will be a lock in his first year of eligibility.

Sloan originally joined the Jazz staff as a scout in 1983 and later became an assistant under Frank Layden about a month into Stockton's rookie season in the fall of 1984. Four years later, Stockton had established himself as one of the elite point guards in the league when — and talk about good timing — Sloan took the head-coaching reins from Layden. Incidentally, that season Stockton was named to the All-Star team for the first of 10 times.