Dream-Teamer, Basketball Hall-of-Famer spotted in Mining City

It's not every day that celebrities are spotted in the Mining City, particularly since the cast and crew of "1923" rode off into the sunset.  Remember how cool Broadway Street looked a couple of summers back?

So when the Montana Tech Orediggers hosted three other teams last weekend for the opening round of the NAIA National Mens Basketball Tournament, it came as a bit of a shock for Mining City sports fans to realize that they were in the company of NBA royalty.  Elite royalty as in the league's all-time leader in assists.  And he wasn't even sitting in the good seats.

John Stockton's roots are about as close to Butte as any NBA player you'll find.  He grew up in Spokane, Washington and played college ball at Gonzaga, so he was always familiar to Butte's large contingent of GU Bulldog fans.  He played his entire NBA career just about six hours south on I-15 in Salt Lake City as a guard with the Utah Jazz, where it was a reasonable drive to catch an NBA game, especially when Utah hosted one of the league's premiere teams.  In high school, a couple of friends and I made the trip when the Chicago Bulls came to town in anticipation of some Michael Jordan heroics.  And we got just that as he put the Bulls up by 7 with under a minute to play.  And then we got to witness this:

With God as my witness, I swear we were there.  This was in back in 1989, and over the course of the next decade the Jazz and Bulls would meet twice for the NBA title and many Butte fans would be in attendance.  Of course, Jordan and Stockton would become teammates on the 1992 Olympic "Dream Team" gaining even further international recognition.  Stockton would retire as one of the NBA's all-time greatest players.  So what was he doing in Butte, Montana?

Turns out, John's son, Sam, is the starting shooting guard for the Lewis-Clark State Warriors who were part of Montana Tech's playoff grouping.  They came in as one of the lowest seeds, but the younger Stockton's basketball pedigree was put on display as LC State swept through the first two rounds and will advance to the final tournament site in Kansas City.  Although it was heartbreaking to Oredigger fans, we wish Sam and his team good luck through the rest of the tournament and hope that John and his family had an enjoyable time in the Mining City.