John Stockton: Even Small-Town Heroes Need To Be Held Accountable

Why did the former NBA star become an anti-vaccine weirdo??

Reaction to Basketball Hall of Famer John Stockton’s ticket suspension from Gonzaga basketball games and his anti-vaccine comments drew swift rebuke from other NBA legends, analysts and fans.

He also collected some support for his views published in The Spokesman-Review on Sunday.

Stockton has been making headlines for his stance related to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and the vaccines developed to save lives.

Two especially sharp criticisms came from former players Detlef Schrempf, whose playing career included tenures with the Seattle SuperSonics and the Portland Trail Blazers, and fellow Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Schrempf retweeted the story and said, “Bat (expletive) crazy. I am so disappointed we have so many role models not up to the task. This is not helping!”

You’d think we’d learn, but we continue to believe that great athletes are somehow bestowed with great knowledge and wisdom. The fact is that some of them have the functional IQ of a fence post and the common sense of a donkey. They excel at ONE thing; it just happens to be something we greatly value, so we impart to them all manner of skills, knowledge, and wisdom.

That faith is invariably unwarranted and often leads to great disappointment and disillusionment. Like when we discover that NBA Hall of Famer John Stockon- the de facto King of Spokane, WA- is a raving, anti-vaccine weirdo. How can someone so gifted on a basketball court be so thoroughly lacking when it comes to common sense? Perhaps he slept through his four years at Gonzaga University? It’s not like he needed a degree to play in the National Basketball Association (NBA).

Even if he didn’t sleep through his time at Gonzaga, it’s not clear the education they university provided him took hold.

Stockton asserted that more than 100 professional athletes have died of vaccination. He also said tens of thousands of people – perhaps millions – have died from vaccines.

“I think it’s highly recorded now, there’s 150 I believe now, it’s over 100 professional athletes dead – professional athletes – the prime of their life, dropping dead that are vaccinated, right on the pitch, right on the field, right on the court,” Stockton said in the interview.

Such claims are dubious and not backed by science, nor are they deemed credible by medical professionals, according to FactCheck.org, a project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center, and research reported by PolitiFact, which is run by the Poynter Institute.

It’s shocking enough that someone so revered in the Spokane community has come out as an anti-vaxxer. To pull numbers out of thin air and present them as truth is unconscionable in a pandemic rolling up on 900,000 American deaths. There’s no evidence to back up his specious assertions, which makes it challenging to understand where he’s coming from. What does he have to gain through such rampant, blatant dishonesty?

Surely, Stockton must understand the seriousness of COVID-19 and the millions it’s killed worldwide, right? What he gains from believing and peddling lies and false statistics is difficult to know, but for now, it’s cost him his customary seats behind the scorer’s table at Gonzaga basketball games.

It didn’t have to happen, but Stockton is the one who’s chosen to travel the path of lies and disinformation.

Speaking about Gonzaga’s vaccine mandate for students, Stockton said “those children and kids their age, they have literally zero statistical risk of being harmed by the disease and they have significant statistical risk of being harmed by the side effects of the so-called vaccines.”

Medical peer-reviewed studies have debunked both of Stockton’s assertions about COVID-19 and the vaccine.

Although less likely to be hospitalized, young and middle-aged adults who are otherwise healthy have still experienced severe illness or died from the virus, according to a Yale Medicine article that was updated on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, more than 529 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered between Dec. 12, 2020, and Tuesday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Public health leaders also have stressed that unvaccinated people – including children – are more likely to spread coronavirus, including to people more at risk for serious illness or death.

None of this information is new or compartmentalized. On the contrary, it’s been widely available for quite some time, so for Stockton to claim he’s not familiar with it, or whatever his reasoning may be, makes no sense. Especially when the vaccine has proven to be far safer than the disease against which it’s intended to protect recipients.

The problem with people like John Stockton is that they think they’re smarter than the scientists who’ve been working on vaccines for years. They’ve given themselves over to misinformation, fear, rumors, and unverified claims with no basis in reality. They ignore the reality right in front of them in favor of prejudice, innuendo, fear-mongering, and a few poorly-researched YouTube videos.

I’m happy Gonzaga is doing the right thing and treating Stockton as they would anyone else who refused to comply with their safety requirements. In so doing, they’ve made it clear that they really do value public safety and public health.

Would that John Stockton possessed the common sense and selflessness to do the same.

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