8. John Stockton (17.2 pts, 14.5 asts, 3.2 stls)
John Stockton is as good a player as there was on the Dream Team. He wasn’t the best, but he was as good as any, able to maximize his strengths and whittle away any weaknesses. The greatest players of his era talk about it openly now: when it came down to endgame and the Utah Jazz, Karl Malone wasn’t who they feared most. It was Stockton.
He’s the all-time leader in assists and steals, leading the league in dimes nine times and swipes twice. He was an All-Star ten times, all-NBA 11 times, All-Defense five times and a top-10 MVP candidate five times. Some guards pass well because they can’t shoot. Stockton was a sniper, annually ranking among the league leaders in shooting percentage, an exceptional feat for a guard. Four times he finished among the top-8 from downtown.
A few members of the Dream Team were paired as teammates in the NBA — Jordan and Pippen; Barkley and Pippen; Barkley and Drexler. But none of those duos were together as long as Stockton and Malone, and while that marriage undoubtedly brought both to certain heights they may never have otherwise achieved, it also robbed us of seeing what they could do when asked to do more on their own. What if Stockton had been a bit more selfish, looked slightly more often for the shot? We’ll never know. After seeing him play every game in 17 of his 19 seasons, we know enough to marvel, even a quarter-century later.