Pickett Kerry L. - Assisted : an autobiography

All photographs courtesy Stockton family except as noted by individual images.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stockton, John, 1962 author.
Assisted : an autobiography / by John Stockton with Kerry L. Pickett.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60907-570-5 (hardbound : alk. paper)
1. Stockton, John, 1962 2. Basketball playersUnited StatesBiography. I. Pickett, Kerry L., author. II. Title.
GV884.S76A3 2013
796.323092dc23
[B]2013019430
Printed in the United States of America
Publishers Printing, Salt Lake City, UT
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my Mom and Dad, Clemy and Jack Stockton, with all my love and appreciation.

John

To those who sustained me and live always in my heart: Mom and Dad, Grandma Lee, Uncle Jack Pickett, Aunt Gert, and Clemy. You lighted my path.

To those still looking out for me: My brother and three sisters, Tim, Cindy, Sally, and Linda; Mark and Sharon Bowman; Sully; Shakey; Dr. Muelheims; Jack and John; all of my Sandpipers and my wife and guiding star, Gini. Thank you.

Kerry

Foreword

The first time I met John Stockton was on the Indiana University campus playing basketball at the 1984 Olympic Trials. The basketball was easy but the trials were hard. John and I sat at the same lunch table and watched as the daily cuts were posted on Coach Knights wall-hung yellow board. The three practices per day were no picnic and neither of us was asking for seconds, though we somehow chewed what Coach put on our plates. John was a senior and I was a sophomore then.

The partnership we formed a few years later while playing for the Utah Jazz lasted almost twenty years. It happened just like it was supposed to happen. I believe that. I think our easy, relaxed, and honest friendship grew partly from our family backgrounds. Though I was from a single parent home, raised by my mom, and John had both parents, the way we were brought up wasnt very different. Our parents had to work hard to provide for us, and they gave us strong values along the way. We soon knew we had this in common.

From the very first, I realized that what you see is what you get with John. He lined up without excuses. Stocks never wavered one iota from his beliefs. He never shared them publicly, so people thought he didnt have them. He did, and he stayed true to them.

Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein/Courtesy of NBA

John and Karl Malone, Olympic gold medalists, 1992.

Inside the lines many people thought he and I worked constantly on the pick-and-roll and outlet passes. It just didnt happen that way. We clicked. We came to believe and trust in each other at a level I never approached with any other teammate. No matter what mistakes Stocks made, I covered for him, and whatever errors I made, he covered for me. Our main concern was always: how can we make it easier for our teammates? We knew we were being counted on, but never had to tell each other that.

We did push each other in our preparation for each season. I believed in my heart of hearts that John was training harder than me, and Im pretty sure he thought I was training harder than him. This turned into an almost two-decade competition, with never a word spoken about a contest. We both became better players in the process.

Its neat to be able to say today, long after the smoke of fame and glory has cleared, that if he called at two-thirty in the morning and needed something, Id say, Where are you at? Ill be there. Anytime, anyplace. Thats how it is with John Stockton.

I never, never, dreamed I could become so close with a teammate. John and I could talk about absolutely anything, from race to religion. I talked to him to get an honest opinion. He always gave it to me straight and never said he wouldnt talk about any issue, if it was important to me.

I have a very private abbreviation I use with only those closest to my heart. 2THENTo the end. Not much lasts that longour friendship will.

As you turn the pages that follow, I hope you enjoy getting to know my very best friend.

Karl Malone

Preface

When John first approached me with his request to help him write this book, I was flattered but uncertain about my qualifications. He explained that he wanted someone he knew he could work with for an extended time period within and around his unpredictable schedule. He pointed out to me that I had a unique qualification: Our lives had closely intertwined for nearly four decades. In many ways John, my wife, Gini, and I had grown up together under the tutelage of Johns parents, Jack and Clemy.

Before surrendering his lifes story to the gauntlet of unknown literary agents, ghostwriters, and publishers, John wanted to try to write his own story. He thought a completed manuscript might have a chance of surviving the process in some recognizable form. Knowing this, I agreed to help himwell aware of the magnitude of the challenge he was proposing.

We launched with some invaluable assistance from the nationally renowned Spokane author Jess Walter. Jess is Johns friend and a fellow parishioner at St. Als in Spokane. He pointed us in the right direction on an unmarked path and offered invaluable insights for our journey. He sketched out the process from A to Z, and John and I worked hard to follow his advice and become serious students of a craft that Jess had mastered.

Our official staff consisted only of the tireless Stephanie Hawk Freeman. She is a former Gonzaga All-American basketball player and West Coast Conference Player of the Year, sporting two masters degrees. She has worked with us since we began the project. Steph was added for brains but additionally brought needed beauty and grace.

Teamwork was the key to fruition. John manned the authors first draft pen as well as the command and control post. I grasped the editors pencil and eraser, while Stephanie focused the technical microscope to examine the product. She also assembled our picture library and organized and completed our research. The reader will have to judge the success of our troika. Ive always felt Johns story was a remarkable one. Im glad to have been a small part of it and to have had the opportunity to help in its telling.

The story told in the pages that follow is Johns, written the way he wanted to tell it. The views and opinions set forth are his, expressed with the hope that they accurately convey his perspectives and priorities on important issues and values. John has crafted his autobiography as a thoughtful recounting of the people, places, and events that have connected to become an extraordinary story of success. He has tried to dog-ear those that serendipitously collided to form the inflection points of his life.

The tale finds its footing backward from an unlikely and unimaginable summit to the rich soils of the Inland Empire and the tiny town of Ferdinand, Idaho. The road winds forward from there to the city of Spokane, Washington, inside a small hospital resting solidly on an impenetrable geologic foundation in a room with an ill-tempered soup salesman and a conscientious country nurse. From that infirmary begins an unlikely ascent to basketball history.