Gary Payton is Going to the Hall of Fame: In Praise of The Glove

While the NBA’s grand old gatekeepers take their time weighing the option of keeping the Sacramento Kings in California’s capital versus relocating the franchise to Seattle, the strongest reason for my pro-Emerald City optimism is that the league ultimately will not escape Seattle’s presence.

Like a ghost unable to stay hidden in a closet of skeletons, the Sonics – the team taken from its home in 2008 and moved to Oklahoma City – will haunt the league until that particular wrong is righted. And while I can envision Sacramento joining the likes of Buffalo, Vancouver and Fort Wayne in the pro basketball history books, I cannot envision the NBA in 10 years without a Seattle franchise.

The latest reminder of the Sonics’ omnipresent legacy was issued this week, with the news that Gary Payton has been voted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Growing up in Seattle during the prime of Payton’s career, my biases say he is the greatest Sonic of all time. But even if I were objective, that wouldn’t be a bold statement.

Payton reigns as the franchise’s career leader in at least 10 major categories, including points, assists and steals. Alongside Shawn Kemp he spearheaded the last great Seattle teams, peaking at an NBA Finals appearance in 1996 and surrounded by a handful of 50- and 60-win seasons. Payton was named NBA Defensive Player of the Year in ’96; he made nine All-Star teams, nine All-Defensive Teams and nine All-NBA teams with the Sonics; and he played on the ’96 and 2000 U.S. Olympic gold-medal squads.

The numbers – including his key role on the Miami Heat’s 2006 NBA championship team – certainly say GP is a Hall of Famer.

And yet ironically, in this stat-obsessed basketball culture, I do not remember one standout stat line belonging to my favorite player. For Tim Duncan, I won’t forget his 21-point, 20-rebound, 10-assist, 8-block effort in Game Six of the 2003 Finals. For Tracy McGrady, it’s 13 points in 33 seconds. For Allen Iverson, 31.1 points per game during his 2001 MVP campaign. For Reggie Miller, 25 points in the fourth quarter at Madison Square Garden. For Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, it’s the 38,387 career points that rank No. 1 in league history. For LeBron James, it’s the all-around brilliance of 36 (and counting) triple-doubles.

For Gary Payton? I know he averaged around 18 points and seven dimes a night with a couple of steals for the Sonics, but no statistical anomaly stands out. No transcendent game or season where the numbers outweigh the images in my brain.
Maybe that was the true greatness of GP: That he had such sustained, consistent greatness.

Payton was a game-changer on defense, neutralizing (if not shutting down) your go-to scorer as well as making key steals and swats in crunch time. His passing and court vision were not awe-inspiring like, say, Jason Kidd or Magic Johnson, but he got the ball where it was supposed to go. He wasn’t a long-range sniper like Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf or an explosive scorer like Derrick Rose, but he got plenty of buckets.

Payton’s most useful skill was doing what needed to be done, closer to the ground than to the rim, longer (17 years in the league) and louder than most of his peers.

Like Duncan, you knew what you were getting from Payton on a nightly basis. Unlike Duncan, Payton’s methodical success came with a maniacal soundtrack.

No, you can’t talk to a basketball fan about Gary Payton without talking about his mouth. A savant in the art of shit-talking, Payton’s Oakland-bred playground bravado will be his lasting signature on the basketball landscape. Whether he was just having fun or looking for a psychological edge – it was most likely both – Payton ran his mouth as sharply and smoothly as he ran the Sonics’ high-octane offense in their mid-90s heyday.[Check out our Top 20 Trash Talkers in NBA History]

And perhaps the greatest trick “The Glove” ever pulled was getting away with it in such a white-bread, polite city as Seattle.

Of course Payton was the hero to myself and every inner-city kid with whom I grew up. But he also managed to get the KeyArena front-row suburbanites and holier-than-thou critics to embrace his in-your-face, shut-up-so-I-can-talk style, even when it didn’t fit the stereotypical laid-back ethos of the Pacific Northwest.

In one of the NBA’s golden era of point guards – in which he battled and often beat the likes of Stockton, Kidd, K.J., Hardaway and Price – Gary Payton was the NBA’s answer to Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Or maybe he was more like Muhammad Ali. For while he did not walk away from the game undefeated, GP is now, certified as a Hall of Famer, undisputed.

Follow Austin on Twitter at @AustinBurton206.

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