50 Greatest Basketball Players Ever - 21 to 30 of the best NBA players ever

#28 John Stockton

NBA Hall of Fame Induction Weekend

Stockton averaged a career double-double, with 13.1 points and 10.5 assists per game. He holds the NBA's record for most career assists (15,806) by a margin of more than 3,000, as well as the record for most career steals (3,265). He had five of the top six assists seasons in NBA history (the other belonging to Isiah Thomas).

He held the NBA record for the most games and consecutive games played with one team, and is third in total games played, behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Robert Parish.

He had previously held the record for most seasons played with one team until the 2015–16 NBA season. He missed only 22 games during his career, 18 of them in one season. He played in 38 games where he tallied 20 or more assists.

He and Karl Malone are regarded by many as the quintessential pick and roll duo. Apart from his passing skill, Stockton was also a capable scorer (13.1 points per game career average and a 51.5 career shooting percentage) with a reliable three-point shot (38.4% career average).

On defense, Stockton holds the NBA record for career steals with 3,265. In second place is Jason Kidd, with 2,684. Stockton was known for his unassuming, no-nonsense approach to the game, hard-nosed defense, and fanatical work-ethic in preparation, which resulted in his extreme durability.

He played 1,504 of 1,526 possible games in his 19-season career. In his first 13 seasons, he missed only four games (all in the 1989–90 season) until he missed the first 18 games of the 1997–98 season due to an injured MCL in his left knee sustained in the preseason.

That was the only major injury in his career, and he never missed another game after returning from that injury. Stockton's tenacity also earned him a reputation among some in the league as being a dirty player, as evidenced by a poll Sports Illustrated conducted in 1997 where he was voted as the second dirtiest player in the league behind Dennis Rodman.

On February 1, 1995, Stockton broke Magic Johnson's record of 9,921 career assists in a game in Salt Lake City against the Denver Nuggets with 6:22 left in the first half with a bounce pass to Karl Malone, ending up with 9,927 in a 129-98 win; it was his 860th game, vs. 874 for Johnson.