Utah Jazz '97-98

The Stockton-Malone team epitomizes the difficulty of evaluating teammates independent of one another. As much as we'd like to say that one is more important than the other -- Malone has traditionally gotten more MVP votes than Stockton, for example -- it hasn't ever been necessary to evaluate it. They have always played together without injury and they recently have stated that they want to end their careers together. Given the short time frame that players now spend with one team, their 12+ years as a complimentary pair stands as one of the great stories of the NBA.

Now that it is necessary to see one without another, I look back on my explicit attempts to determine the relative responsibility of each of them for the success of the Jazz. Many of my methods were developed in '86-88, when these two were beginning to show their greatness. The methods I was working on were explicitly developed to help "uncorrelate" the contributions of teammates. Individual floor percentage and individual offensive ratings were developed to apportion credit between the passer and the shooter according to how difficult the contributions were. Though Stockton-Malone wasn't my first application of the method -- Magic Johnson to any other Laker was -- the Utah pair became an instant test of what I was working on.

My numbers showed Stockton the early hero for the Jazz. His offensive efficiency as early as '87-88 made him my top point guard in the league along with Magic Johnson. Malone was getting good, but he was still turning the ball over like a young player and his 70% foul shooting looked bad at the time (70% would be heaven for Shaquille O'Neal and Chris Webber these days). In the '88 playoff series against the Lakers, John Stockton, not Karl Malone, was the guy who nearly killed LA's back-to-back run.

Utah was only 47-35 in '88, though. It would be in '89 that Karl Malone would take his leap to greatness (the kind of leap young players now are not really making) and the Jazz would become consistent contenders. Since then, the two have been almost equally great:

Since the methods I have developed were designed to decouple the passer from the shooter, I don't expect Karl Malone's performance to change significantly while Stockton is out. Essentially, you should be able to substitute Howard Eisley's stats for Stockton's and get an idea of how much the Jazz are going to lose. Unfortunately for the Jazz, this is quite a bit. Based on last season's numbers, the Jazz lose roughly five points per game between the offense and defense by replacing Stockton with Eisley. That is roughly the difference between 19-5 and 15-9 over an estimated 24 games that Stockton will miss. The Jazz were 20-4 in their first 24 last year.

Though no one roots for this kind of injury, it will be a good test for the power of the methods available for distinguishing the two Hall of Fame careers.