For an outsider, what qualifies as a landmark in Spokane? Based on network airtime and national ink, what's the most recognizable feature of the landscape?

The Pavilion at Riverfront Park? The Falls? The Arena?

Not even. Would you believe Jack and Dan's Tavern?

The last 15 years of the 20th century have seen a parade of minicams and magazine writers to Jack Stockton's joint on North Hamilton to detail the delirium of a Utah Jazz game night. The satellite dish captures the distant signal and the regulars roll in for another round of we-knew-him-when. NBC, ESPN, stations from Salt Lake City and Chicago and Los Angeles, Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News -- all have bellied up to Jack's bar to hear about the summer days when John Stockton would ride up on his bicycle and cadge quarters from his old man in between best-of-sevens on the driveway.

The cameras will pan the inside of this popular saloon and pick up on a Jazz banner, but no picture of Spokane's favorite basketball son.

"Heck, no," insists Jack Stockton. "If I'm going to hang anybody's picture, it's going to be mine."

As it should be. Yes, Jack Stockton's father, Houston, was possibly the best football player Gonzaga University ever produced; and his son is certainly the best basketball player. But Jack runs a world-class neighborhood tavern, and that's its own kind of hall of fame.

John Stockton will have his picture hanging in another soon enough.

Nine times a National Basketball Association All-Star and twice an Olympic gold medalist, the 6-foot-1 Stockton has succeeded spectacularly as an undersized player in an oversized sport -- and, most impressively, coming from a city with virtually no pedigree as a producer of basketball talent.

But more than just succeed, Stockton has redefined the concept of his position -- point guard -- to its purest form.

That point was crystallized on February 1, 1995, when he flipped a high bounce pass to his longtime Jazz teammate Karl Malone stationed down low along the key. Malone gathered the ball, spun and buried a turn-around jump shot over Denver defender Brian Williams.

With that pass and Malone's basket, Stockton became the NBA's all-time leader in assists with 9,922, passing Magic Johnson just as he had leapfrogged Oscar Robertson, Isaiah Thomas and Maurice Cheeks before.

"Many of them did a lot of things better than John," said Jazz president Frank Layden, who made Stockton the team's first-round draft pick out of Gonzaga in 1984. "But John is the greatest passer who has played the game."

Johnson, for one, did not disagree.

"There is nobody that can distribute the ball, plus lead his team, like John Stockton," Johnson said at the time. "He is the best at it."

Stockton's assist total is now over 13,000 -- more than 5,000 assists ahead of any other active player. Fifty-five weeks after setting that record, he also became the NBA's career leader in steals.

The best passer the game has ever known was born March 26, 1962, one of four children of Jack and Clementine Stockton. He was always on the smallish side, but he was gifted with huge hands, prescient vision and uncompromising competitive drive. The driveway games at home against older brother Steve are neighborhood legend. His freshman coach at Gonzaga Prep, Ed Smith, remembers Stockton calling him on Sunday afternoons.

"Open the gym," Stockton would demand, "and bring your fat friends."

"He was a 5-5 ninth grader," Smith said. "He'd play his butt off and get mad if he got beat by a 25-year-old. He won't back down."

Overlooked by bigger colleges, he could hardly be ignored by Gonzaga -- the Stockton home being just four blocks from campus. To no one's surprise from this very loyal neighborhood, he blossomed into a star in short order. But to the astonishment of almost everyone, he made NBA talent hounds pay attention to this corner of the world by nearly making the 1984 U.S. Olympic team. Bobby Knight, the coach designate that year, cut him just before lunch.

Stockton still remembers the menu.

"Fish sticks," he said. "I couldn't eat. I just sat there and looked at it. If you'd asked me beforehand, I'd have doubted that I'd ever be invited to try out. I had no expectations of being on the team. But when you're cut, it's as bad as not being invited in the first place."

But the experience was a window into Stockton's rising station in the basketball world.

"How many guys are better in college than they were in high school and are better in the pros than they were in college?" wondered Dan Fitzgerald, the coach who recruited him to Gonzaga. "Every time the pitching has gotten better, he's hit it better."

By draft day, he'd played his way into the first round -- though the Jazz still got a lot of "Who's he?" catcalls when they drafted him with the 16th pick. After a three-year apprenticeship under incumbent point guard Rickey Green, Stockton took over as the starter -- and promptly broke the NBA's single-season assist record.

Statistics have never been Stockton's concern. Assists, he insists, measure "a lot of things.

"It measures good shooters; it measures how much the ball is in your hands. Maybe your assists go up because you play a certain way or you play a lot of minutes.

"I was lucky. I've always played the same position, so I've always had the same view of the floor. If I had the same skills that, for example, an Anfernee Hardaway has -- size and all the things he can do -- I doubt that I would be in the role of passer as often as I am."

Not that he can't score. With a lifetime field-goal percentage of .520, he is one of the most accurate shooting guards in NBA history. The most dramatic shot in Jazz history -- the buzzer-beating 3-pointer against Houston that put them into the NBA Finals in 1997 for the first time -- came off of Stockton's fingertips.

That the Jazz have never collected the champion's ring remains Stockton's greatest disappointment, though whatever the regular season measures, Utah has been the yardstick. Since Stockton joined the franchise, the Jazz have won 767 games; only the Lakers have won more (793), most of those in the 1980s.

And he does have some other jewelry -- those two Olympic gold medals.

When FIBA, the international governing body for basketball, voted to allow American professionals into the Olympic Games in 1992, Stockton was chosen for the original Dream Team.

"That team was so good that the accomplishment of winning wasn't as great as the accomplishment of being selected," Stockton acknowledged.

However, his dream took an immediate detour when, in the qualifying Tournament of the Americas, he collided with Michael Jordan and suffered an undisplaced fracture of the right leg. He did recover enough to play a few minutes in Barcelona. And even as mostly a spectator, the hype and hysteria that surrounded the Dream Team stripped Stockton of whatever anonymity he still had and "changed my life forever."

That didn't make him at all reluctant to do it again in 1996, when another team of American pros steamrolled through Olympic competition.

He has, in every respect, made every team he's been on better.

"Here's a guy that knows so much about the game and what his team needs him to do," said Ron Harper of the Chicago Bulls, who had the duty of defending Stockton in both the 1997 and '98 NBA Finals. "Even at this age, no, I don't think he's lost a thing. He's as smart, as crafty as he ever was and that's probably the most important thing."

Throughout it all, Stockton has doggedly tried to preserve his privacy and raise his family -- he and wife Nada have five children -- without the trappings of celebrity. Each summer, they return to Spokane and Priest Lake. Each August and September, Stockton works himself back into shape playing against the current varsity at Gonzaga.

"You're a person," he says, "before you're ever a player."

But a player he is -- by acclamation one of the 50 best in history, as chosen during the NBA's 50th birthday in 1996.

And something of a Spokane landmark himself.

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Editor's Note: On May 2, 2003, John Stockton announced his retirement with a released statement instead of the customary news conference. The Utah Jazz later held a retirement ceremony for him, in which Salt Lake City renamed the street in front of the Energy Solutions Arena, where the Jazz play, "John Stockton Drive." Stockton's number-12 jersey was retired by the Jazz during a game on November 22, 2004.

John Stockton is considered to be one of the NBA's greatest point guards. He averaged a career double-double, with 13.1 points and 10.5 assists per game. He holds the NBA's record for most career assists (15,806) by a considerable margin, as well as the record for most career steals (3,265). He had five of the top six assists seasons in NBA history (the other belonging to Isiah Thomas). He holds the NBA record for the most seasons and consecutive games played with one team and is third in total games played, behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Robert Parish. He missed only 22 games during his career, 18 of them in one season. As a point of comparison, he played in 34 games where he tallied 20 or more assists.

Stockton appeared in 10 All-Star games and was named co-MVP of the game in 1993 with Jazz teammate Karl Malone, which was held in Salt Lake City, Utah. He played with the 1992 and 1996 US Olympic basketball teams, known as "Dream Team" I and II, the first Olympic squads to feature NBA players, keeping the game ball from both Gold Medal games. He was selected to the All-NBA First Team twice, the All-NBA Second Team six times, the All-NBA Third Team three times, and the NBA All-Defensive Second Team five times. He was named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA history in 1996. Stockton's career highlight came in Game 6 of the 1997 Western Conference Finals, in which he hit the winning 3-point shot over the Houston Rockets' Charles Barkley to send the Jazz to the first of its two consecutive NBA Finals appearances.

John and his wife Nada now have six children.