Outside of Utah, the basketball world today will be focused largely on Michael Jordan.
That's for good reason. He transcended the game. He was the first player to gain true international appeal. He even changed the length of the shorts its players use. The phrase "be like Mike" took on a special meaning in the culture. When he chose to come back from retirement, it made news around the world.
But two other inductees into the Hall of Fame, the two guys with Utah Jazz ties, got there by connecting with the common fan. The average working stiff — the man or woman who either has to dig deep to buy a ticket or who relies on an office pool to win tickets an employer paid for — couldn't identify much with MJ's gravity-defying one-man show. Jordan was something to be admired and treasured, like fine art or the Grand Canyon. John Stockton and Jerry Sloan? Those are guys who showed everyone what they could do if they just worked hard enough.
If you've been around long enough, you can remember Sloan as a player — the immovable object in the Chicago Bull's back court, a player unafraid to stand his ground and take a charging foul against anyone, including Wilt Chamberlain, that era's monster center. But if you only know him as coach of the Jazz, you know him as a demanding leader who treats opposing teams the way he treats stubborn tree stumps on his farm in Illinois: just keep applying relentless pressure until they finally give.
Sloan has coached the Jazz for 21 years. He's the only coach in NBA history to notch 1,000 wins with one team, and he proved in 2004, the year he won the Sporting News Coach of the Year award, that he could win even without any superstars on his bench. He did it all while defining "old school" with an offense that was more feet-on-the-ground pick-and-roll than high-flying circus.
Stockton fit so well into the Sloan plan because he couldn't have been more like the coach if he had been his son. He came to work every day and gave 100 percent, no matter how he felt. He was barely 6-foot-1 in a land of tall and thick freaks of nature, and yet he found ways to befuddle them all and win. He was brains over brawn, Frodo against Sauron, David in a land of Goliaths and an inspiration to all who struggle with their own feelings of inadequacy.
Utah's contribution to the Hall of Fame won't be complete until Karl Malone joins the crowd. Still, it is fitting that Stockton and Sloan share the spotlight today with Jordan. Sure, the flashy MJ won the championship trophies. That's how endings often write themselves in sports. But he had to go through Stockton and Sloan to get there, and they gave him all he could handle.
It's fitting, and entirely appropriate, that their era of basketball will forever be enshrined in the game's memory.