Friday, February 11 His numbers are down, but Stockton's still an All-Star By Mike Monroe Special to ESPN.com

	Stockton's selection was one of several controversial All-Star picks.

This is about the changing of the guard in the Western Conference for the All-Star game. It's sort of about the new guard vs. the old guard. Mostly, though, it's about the old guard ... the 37-year-old guard.

John Stockton will play in Sunday's All-Star game, and there are some players around the league who don't think that's right. On a recent visit to an Eastern Conference city, another veteran point guard, who shall remain nameless but who has been an All-Star in his earlier years also, questioned the selection of Stockton as a reserve on the West squad.

When it was suggested that Stockton's selection perhaps served as some sort of lifetime achievement award, recognition of the fact he is the NBA's all-time leader in assists and remains among the league's assist leaders in spite of diminished playing time, the Eastern Conference point guard rolled his eyes, as if to say, "So what about my lifetime achievements."

Then, he asked, ""Yeah, but is he playing this season like an All-Star?"

Well, the answer to that question is undeniably in the affirmative.

What Stockton is doing, at age 37 (he will celebrate his 38th birthday in six more weeks) is nothing short of remarkable. He is averaging only 28.7 minutes a game, down nearly seven minutes a game from just two seasons ago, but remains the NBA's No. 4 assist man, at 8.6 per game. He is the only guard on either All-Star roster making more than 50 percent of his shots (50.5 after a stretch of six games in which he shot an astounding 64 percent) and he is averaging 12.1 points.

Those are All-Star numbers, any way you cut them.

The fans at Sunday's All-Star game at Oakland's New Arena no doubt would have preferred to see Sacramento's Jason Williams in Sunday's game, not in Saturday's rookie game. Truth be told, an entire division at NBA headquarters (NBA Entertainment) probably tried to overturn the coaches' voting to make Williams an All-Star. He is the darling of the league's marketers because he is a showman, and never mind the fact that in two of the four games he played last week, the opposing point guard went for triple doubles against him. The All-Star game is all about flash and dash, Williams' trademark, and hardly about efficiency and precision, which is Stockton's stock in trade.

I say the Western coaches made exactly the right decision.

"I look at John Stockton," Jazz coach Jerry Sloan says of the only starting point guard he ever has coached, "and he's an unusual player in this league. He's had a great career, but he played two-and-a-half years off the bench. How many guys in that position have ever had to play two-and-a-half years off the bench, and then be an All-Star almost every year after that. Name me another player who's had to do that.

"But most of the guys who come in and are All-Stars, they stay that way and people respect them. He's never been looked upon, really and truly in my opinion, with the respect he's deserved. And I think that's hurt him a great deal.

"But we know what a great player he is, and what a great player he's been for our franchise, and that's all it's ever been with him. That's what he's about anyway, trying to win games."

Don't misunderstand. Sloan knows the All-Star game is about nothing but entertainment. But in his mind, what's right is right, and Stockton on the All-Star team is as right as things get.

"People want to be entertained," Sloan said, "and these young guys can entertain as well as anybody else. That's what the All-Star game is -- an entertainment. It's not about who can set the most screens or see who's going to pass the ball and that sort of thing."

In other words, it's not about the things that Stockton and his All-Star running mate, Karl Malone, do to make the Jazz one of the NBA's elite teams.

"It's going to be entertainment," Sloan said, "who can dunk more; who can take somebody one on one."

Meanwhile, Malone has made background noise about sitting out the game ... that back injury that bothered him in pre-season just might flare up and prevent him from going to Oakland. Malone is still bitter about his experience at the NBA's last All-Star game in New York, where he arrived at LaGuardia Airport and nobody from the league met him, so he schlepped his own bags and took a cab to his hotel, where he discovered -- and we are not making this up -- that when he lay in his bed he could change channels on the TV set by stretching just a bit and hitting the channel selector button with his toes. He ended up in a suite at Trump Tower because he had something of an acquaintance in "The Donald."

Then, Malone got waved off a screen by then-rookie Kobe Bryant so Bryant could try to take Michael Jordan off the dribble.

Final insult was added to injury when the league promoted this season's All-Star balloting at a national theater chain. Movie patrons were greeted by a huge poster that contained ballots and featured Bryant and Tim Duncan and Allen Iverson.

"To take nothing away from a young guy," Malone said, "but if you're going to go to every movie theater in the country, and you put certain guys on the ballot when people walk in, and they don't have the MVP from the last couple years on there ... I don't know. Tell me that. Just put me in the background and let it kind of reflect off me. Hell, I didn't even have to be out front, but I'm just a player in this league. S___, I'm just trying to stay healthy."

So Malone let it slip that he might not be healthy enough to play in Sunday's game. That, according to sources within the NBA, did not sit well with David Stern, well aware Malone hasn't missed a game since Hector was a pup, unless he was forced to sit out because he was suspended for some on-court misdemeanor.

Personally, we wonder why the commissioner would care. Malone's absence would mean he could personally select one of the young stars the league so desperately is trying to promote, maybe even Williams.

Somehow, though, we suspect Mailman will be delivered to Oakland, and that will suit us just fine. Just make sure Phil Jackson puts him and Stockton on the court together. Even in the All-Star game they run the pick and roll.

Mike Monroe, who covers the NBA for the Denver Post, writes a Western Conference column for ESPN.com. You can e-mail him at monroe128@go.com