John Stockton claims "1,000s" of pro athletes have died from the COVID vaccine
Anatomy of insanity
John Stockton, a Basketball Hall of Famer and NBA career assists and steals leader, is a soft-spoken man who projects calm rationality. It is a mask. Underneath his aw-shucks exterior is a fevered conspiracy theorist who says the COVID vaccine has killed thousands of professional athletes.
Last week he offered his junk science on Michele Tafoya’s misnomered (at least in this case) ‘Sideline Sanity With Michele Tafoya’ show. The host reasonably asked Stockton if he had evidence for his assertion, saying,
“I would be derelict if I did not ask you this question John because there’s one article here, and quite a few mention this, that you claimed that 100, 150 athletes have dropped dead since the vaccine came out — where did you get that information?”
Tafoya is referring to Stockton’s contention that athletes were at far greater risk from the COVID vaccination than from COVID itself. He first made that unscientific claim in a documentary released in June 2021 “COVID and the Vaccine: Truth, Lies, and Misconceptions Revealed,” in which he hazarded that maybe 100 or possibly 150 pro athletes had been struck down by COVID vaccine side effects.
Stockton repeated the claim in a January 2022 interview with Washington's ‘Spokesman-Review’ after his alma mater, Gonzaga University revoked his basketball season tickets when he defied their mask mandate. He told the newspaper,
“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 answered Tafoya by explaining where he got his information. And he told her he had a “system” for information validation. In his words,
“I got it from a lot of places, otherwise I would never have had the confidence to share it. And that’s the beauty of it. I have quite a system I go through before I open my mouth, especially with statistics.”
So far, so good. But anyone waiting for details will be disappointed. Stockton never enumerates his “lots of places”. And he gives no insight into the nuts and bolts of his “system.” However, this lack of specificity does not preclude him from elevating his death count. He added,
“I knew at the time 150 was dramatically low and I thought it was in the area of 300. So when I went and spoke at the Spokesman-Review we had a nice interview and they asked then of course whatever fact check.org or.com came out and said well that’s baloney. I went back and I looked again.
I have names, pictures, faces, where they played. I had over 300 at the time so I felt pretty secure with my little 150. And people had to come out and argue that. And I had the proof in my hands OK with the names so it’s way more than that now. I think it’s in the thousands now. But don’t quote me on that one.”
Again he provides no specifics. His tactics are no different from Sen. Joe McCarthy's wild assertion,
“While I cannot take the time to name all the men in the State Department who have been named as members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring, I have here in my hand a list of 205.”
McCarthy never did name them. And Stockton pursues the same duplicitous path. Why will he not share a single name? I am sure Stockton believes what he is saying. But even in his madness, he must hear a little voice whispering that his so-called evidence is shite. And as long as he does not hold it up to scrutiny, he can maintain the pretense it is valid. But somewhere in his subconscious, he knows his argument has the solidity of pure wind.
Tafoya in turn agreed not to spread Stockton's latest number. She said,
“OK, we’re not quoting John on that one.”
Stockton laughed before adding,
“It’s not 3000, but it might be. It’s a big number.”
If you must lie, you might as well lie big. As Stalin reportedly said (but probably did not) “A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”
One last thought. Had Tafoya been a better interviewer, she might have asked Stockton if someone could become a world-class point guard by surfing the internet. And when he replied that they could not, she should have followed up by asking him why he thought someone could become an expert on vaccinations by searching websites.