Former Utah Jazz played Carlos Arroyo was a guest on the ‘OGs Podcast’ with Mike Miller and Udonis Haslem. When speaking about his stint with the Utah Jazz, Arroyo revealed that John Stockton was not an active mentor. While he praised Stockton for being a great player who set an example for everyone else, he wouldn’t take other players under his wing, and even actively avoided the young players.
“You know who you’re playing for. It was a great opportunity for me, so I wasn’t trying to go out there and messing it up right away. John was great, but John wasn’t the type of guy that would take the rookies and, ‘Come, in let me teach you how to play pick and roll.'”
“That was never my relationship with John. But I’ve learned a lot from watching him. His approach to the game, his decision-making, and things like that. And he was always to himself. If we were in the locker room joking around before the game, he would get up and leave.”
Arroyo played for the Utah Jazz between 2002 to 2005. Both Stockton and Karl Malone were in the twilight of their respective careers and were just looking to find a clean break from the NBA so that they could end their stints with some respect and dignity, so it isn’t surprising to hear of Arroyo’s experience. In fact, Arroyo’s first season with the Jazz would end up being Stockton’s final year of his career.
While it would have been great to see Stockton take on a mentor role on the Jazz in his final year, he was under no obligation to do so, considering he had been in the NBA for nearly two decades at that point, and was more concerned with seeing out the end of his contract before calling time on his career.
Stockton Doesn’t Believe In Handouts
One can imagine that a mentorship role for Stockton is an important one. And he isn’t going to give his advice to just anybody. Perhaps the person the former Jazz point guard gave his mentorship to was his son David. David followed in his father’s footsteps to become a professional basketball player and has played in the G-League for over a decade.
Stockton had a legendary career, and to this day, holds the record for the most assists in NBA history with 15,806 assists. To put this into context, Stockton played 1,504 games in his career, which means he averaged 10.5 assists a game across his career. That is a ridiculous achievement for any NBA player.
The only player who has come close to Stockton in recent years is Chris Paul, who sits right underneath him on the list with 12,167 assists in his career. Given Paul’s age, he is unlikely to surpass John Stockton as the NBA’s all-time assists leader before he retires.
In fact, former NBA star Matt Barnes believes that it is more likely that a future NBA player will surpass LeBron James‘ all-time scoring record of 41,192 (at the time of this writing) than a future player surpassing John Stockton’s NBA assists record of 15,806 assists. Given the way the passing role has changed in the NBA, it appears that Barnes might be right with his prediction.
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