Stockton’s Value Off The Charts
Welcome to the summer of avarice.
I refer, of course, to the scramble to woo and win a talent-rich pool of basketball free agents. Small supply, large demand, predictable result: Bidding went through the roof.
Juwan Howard sells to the Heat for a reported $98 million. Michael Jordan agrees to a one-year pact with the Chicago Bulls for $30 million. Shaquille O’Neal becomes a Los Angeles Laker for $121 million. Rarely has capitalism seemed coarser, colder or bolder.
In the midst of this, I came across a story tucked inside my sports section about John Stockton of the Utah Jazz. Stockton is one of the game’s best point guards; in fact, he is the NBA’s all-time assists leader, having last season broken a record set by Magic Johnson.
Stockton was a free agent, and according to the paper, would have commanded at least $40 million on the open market. He chose to stay put for “only” $15 million over three years.
“I’m not leaving Utah,” he said. “If that turns around and bites me, then that’s the way it goes. I like it here. This is where I’m comfortable, my family’s comfortable, and I love the team and the coaches.”
Stockton didn’t even try to leverage his way into a better deal. As he explained, “It’d be kind of a joke for me to say ‘Yeah, I’m going to check my options.’ I’m not. For me to say I’d go play somewhere else would be a lie. So why do it?” Maybe you think that kind of class makes the Howards and O’Neals look shabby, but I’m not here to offer that diatribe. It’d be the height of hypocrisy to blame Juwan Howard or Shaquille O’Neal for doing the same thing I’d do if I were a foot taller and a hundred times more athletic.
If you can get someone to pay you $100 million for your services, good luck and Godspeed. Athletic skill is a perishable commodity and can be snatched away altogether by a single unlucky bounce of the ball. So who can begrudge a player who chooses to literally take the money and run?
And yet…there is something about Stockton’s choice that calls to me. Something that stirs memories of finer motivations.
Money can’t buy happiness, we said, once upon a time. But to say that now is to feel old and clueless, helpless against the buffeting tide of a media culture that preaches the opposite.
Acquisitiveness has come to seem natural. We shrug at it as if to say, “But of course.” If poor children choose the drug trade over minimum wage, that’s regrettable but inevitable. If some marriages are mere mergers founded on luxury baubles, God bless the child. If courts put huge price tags on small injuries, well, it’s about getting yours while you can.
And if we can’t muster indignation for these things, how can anyone condemn a Shaquille O’Neal for following the money?
We can’t. We can only understand. Even as we posture resentment and spout righteous hypocrisies about loyalty and sentiment, we understand.
But Stockton’s decision still resonates. It’s not as if he’s going to starve on $15 million, but to have turned down a chance to make better than twice as much?!? To spurn bigger money just because he was comfortable and liked a place? That’s the thing we’re ill-equipped to understand. But like a tickle at the rim of conscience, it won’t let go. Not me, at least.
Indeed, it makes me wonder about this chase, this daily race we run with the rats. We run so hard the world passes in a blur - summers to winters, children to adults, spouses to strangers. We run so hard we forget what it was like not to run. We run so hard we outrace our lives. We run so hard.
And we never reach the finish line. Never reach the point where a dollar becomes irrelevant. How much is enough? At what point do you stop the race and reclaim your life?
Fifteen million is more than you or I are likely to see for our efforts, but it says something that at least this guy has set a limit, found a finish line. John Stockton stands out for not running. He makes you ponder and ache for the things you might see, but for the courage to get there walking.
xxxx