The first time John Stockton touched the 8-foot-tall bronze statue of himself was when he first saw it last week at the foundry.
He and Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan went there to see it.
"I had to stand next to it at the foundry and bounced into it," he said. "It felt like Greg Kite, because I'd run into him a few times, and it felt exactly the same," said Stockton about the former BYU 7-footer, who made an NBA reputation as a tough customer.
Stockton said he had no input on the sculpture, unveiled publicly Wednesday afternoon on the Delta Center plaza, except to OK the picture from which it was made. It was one of Stockton wearing the original Jazz note uniform with the short shorts and making one of those one-handed passes on the run for which he was so well known. He spent an hour and a half posing in that position so artist Brian Challis could measure every inch of him with calipers.
Stockton said he didn't recall choosing the uniform, "but I'm happy with it. Brian did a great job."
And as for his throwback short shorts, he deadpanned, "Oh, they'll come back around. Everything comes back."
Stockton was happy with the statue, except, "I think you got the biceps a little too small," he joked to Challis during the unveiling ceremony prior to Wednesday night's Jazz game with Denver. "I think they cut me a little short, but that's about all."
Stockton thanked the crowd that had gathered and called it "a neat moment for all of us," including his family, which helped cut the ties to the helium-filled balloons that had shrouded the statue from public view until Wednesday afternoon.
In a rare personal insight, Stockton told the crowd, "I was thinking back when Karl Malone and I, when one of us would be in the weight room early in the morning and the other one wasn't there, the first comment to the other person would be, 'It's mighty lonely up here.'
"That's really my first impression here. It's mighty lonely up here, and it will be good to see the big fella up here in short order."
The retired Jazz power forward's statue is in the works and will be presented some time next season, either at the time his Jazz jersey is retired or at a separate celebration. That's Malone's call, said Jazz owner Larry H. Miller.
Malone's statue will then stand a few feet from Stockton's on the plaza that is already in place and framed by a bronze-and-cement Chinese "yin yang," a circle with an "S" curve in the middle, which Miller said symbolizes "peace and unity and stuff like that."
Like "Stockton to Malone."
The yin-yang was Challis' idea. He designed the entire plaza, as well as the statue that is already in place and the one in the works.
Oh, and he may have another job after that.
Someone asked Stockton if Sloan should have his own pedestal and bronze nearby. Ever the practical one, Stockton responded, "Do you know what these things cost?"
But he added, "Jerry's been a huge part. Speaking for myself, none of this happens for me without him. Perfect coach at the perfect time and a great friend, so I think it would be money well spent."
So does Miller, who put the cost of each statue at about $175,000-$200,000 and the cost of the plaza at about the same, making the whole scene, when completed, about $600,000.
He has already gotten great satisfaction from the project, especially after seeing fans Wednesday walking up to the yin-yang — which is inlaid with bronze plaques mentioning a dozen of Stockton's biggest accomplishments, 12 of Malone's and eight Stockton-to-Malone moments. There are also hand- and foot-prints and autographs of each, and old and new Jazz logos. On Wednesday, Miller watched fans put their hands and feet into the impressions of Stockton and Malone to see how they measured up, just as Miller had hoped they would find pleasure in doing.
Miller has already mulled the idea of a third statue — of Sloan — as Stockton would like to see. "Absolutely. It has been contemplated," Miller said. "It's something that, just as John did at first, Jerry would resist, as far as nature and personality, but he's been pretty special, too.
"Might even want to put him on his tractor," Miller added about Sloan, the southern Illinois farmer who moonlights in Utah when the growing season wanes.
Like Stockton said, he thinks his statue looks lonely. And he likes to consider the whole episode — uncomfortable as always for him — as something in which all Jazz fans had a part.
"It's very humbling," Stockton said, "the responsibility of sitting up there.
"It's acceptable," he added, "when it's shared by all."
E-mail: lham@desnews.com