HOUSTON — The Jazz were on a four-game road trip, the last three stops of which took them to Houston, Detroit and Chicago. Their starting point guard at the time, Rickey Green, wasn't going to be available, and the fellas at the front of the bus weren't sure what to do.
It was 17 years ago, March of 1985.
Jerry Sloan — then an assistant to head coach Frank Layden — remembers it like, well, yesterday's breakfast.
The details are a tad foggy. Was it dry cereal, or the oatmeal? Anyway, Sloan beckons his recall, and it all starts coming back.
"I think Rickey got sick," Sloan said.
Much clearer is how Jazz brass were feeling.
Worried. Quite worried.
They looked around, saw the rail-thin rookie reserve from Gonzaga and didn't know what to think.
"Because he looks a little frail, whenever you looked at him back then," remembers Sloan, who a few years later would succeed Layden as Jazz head coach.
"Frank and Scott (Layden, then a Jazz assistant) and I talked a great deal," Sloan said, "about, 'I don't know if this guy's gonna hold up playing 48 minutes a game.' "
But guess what? The guy not only held up, he helped them to consecutive wins over the Rockets, Pistons and Bulls.
"The guy played 46, 47 minutes a game, and never broke a sweat," Sloan said. "It kind of gave you an idea there was something going on here that was a little unusual. And he's certainly unusual."
From that day forward, helping the Jazz out of tough situations became the norm for John Stockton.
Now, as the NBA's all-time leader approaches his 15,000th assist — he needs just 13 more, so it could come today at Houston or Monday night in Memphis — frail is the last thing Sloan sees in Stockton.
Stockton has missed only 22 games in his 18-season, 1,401-game career — meaning he has missed fewer than 2 percent of the Jazz's games since they drafted him 16th overall in 1984.
Even more amazing: With his 40th birthday just 16 days away, Stockton's current consecutive regular-season games-played streak stands at 339 — second in the NBA only to ex-teammate Shandon Anderson of the New York Knicks.
His health and resulting longevity are big reasons the assists keep coming. So, too, is the fact he dishes so many to the league's No. 2 career scorer, Karl Malone, a man who has missed only three games due to injury in 17 seasons as Stockton's teammate.
"I don't think anybody that's ever played this game has taken as good care of themselves as they have, as long as they've done it," Sloan said. "Not just at the end of their career. They were doing that at the beginning of their career."
Stockton's route to 15,000, however, is much more complex than that.
It's the way he plays the point, Sloan says, that has allowed this sure-pick Hall of Famer, also the NBA's all-time steals leader, to compile the numbers he has.
"I don't think he'll ever catch himself in an awkward position . . . A lot of guys are flying through the air, making passes — you know, behind-the-back passes that may tear somebody's hand or arm off in the process," Sloan said. "But he gives you the basketball where you can do something with it. And players like that."
Sloan, who has witnessed nearly every one of Stockton's assists, knows lesser point guards would not post similar statistics even if they, too, spent nearly two decades playing with the likes of Malone.
"He's had to do it with situations where he's had bigger guys guarding him. He's had two guys guarding him a lot of times," Sloan said. "And he's still able to get it in there — because he has terrific hands to pass the ball.
"A lot of guys have to pass the ball . . . with two hands, and that causes tougher problems. You can't move your body far-enough away, or around people quick enough, to get the ball to someone where they can do something with it (when using two hands). He can lean out away from people, because he's got the skills with his hands."
Stockton, as is his nature, largely downplays all the hullabaloo being made over 15,000.
"Good teammates," he says when asked the secret to his success.
But more important than that, Sloan suggests, is a motto Stockton lives by: "Know your customer."
Running with teammates on a fastbreak, Stockton is sharp enough to quickly determine who will catch the pass cleanly, who might bobble the ball. He also has a knack for finding the open man, and knowing right away if that player is in position to make a shot within his range.
Prime example: Late in the Jazz's game against the Los Angeles Lakers Wednesday night, Stockton somehow found Scott Padgett for a wide-open 3-pointer that sealed Utah's win.
Sloan: "Coming down the stretch, and everybody else is covered — to find Scott Padgett, after going through a maze of people . . ."
Sloan's voice trails, and he briefly shakes his head before speaking again. "Because he knows Scott can make those shots. And he put the ball in his hands, and (Padgett) stepped up and made it. That's what the game's about."
Stockton's pass-first mentality makes a huge difference, too.
"He's always been a point guard," Sloan said. "He's always looked at the floor from a different perspective: He's never had the basketball with his back to the basket. He's always facing the basket — for 40 years."
Or at least it may seem that long since that fateful trip to Houston, Detroit and Chicago.
No wonder Sloan just chuckles when he considers how mind-boggling 15,000 really is, especially knowing the closest to come to that number is the man Stockton passed with No. 10,142, Magic Johnson.
"When I look back at when John first started," Sloan said, "conversations at times were 'Can this guy hold up?' That's been the least of his problems."
E-MAIL: tbuckley@desnews.com