NBA legend John Stockton details reasons for his medical 'beliefs' in court filing

NBA legend John Stockton has submitted a declaration in federal court that details the reasons for his recent rebellion against vaccines and COVID-19 restrictions – reasons that are at odds with science and instead rooted in personal experiences or misconceptions.

Stockton, 62, said in the declaration filed Tuesday that he noticed a “pattern” after he contracted the flu decades ago despite getting the flu vaccine. He said one of his children was harmed by vaccines, though he didn’t say how. He also said he listened to the advice of a chiropractor who told him to consider “not vaccinating my children.”

It should be noted that chiropractors aren’t epidemiologists trained in investigating patterns and causes of illnesses such as the flu and COVID. Also, flu vaccines aren’t 100% effective because there are different strains of the flu, a virus that changes over time. Vaccines instead can reduce the risk and severity of the illness, according to the Mayo Clinic and other scientific sources.

“A pattern was emerging,” Stockton said in the declaration filed in U.S. District Court in Spokane, Wash. “I contracted the flu despite the vaccine. My child was hurt because of the vaccine. Maybe there was some truth in our Chiropractor’s words. I spent a lot of time over the next 30 years reading books, paying attention, and asking questions. To find the truth, I used a mosaic approach seeking data, anecdotal information, personal experience, common-sense and contrary indicators.”

Why is John Stockton doing this?

Stockton submitted the declaration in support of his lawsuit against Washington state officials who cracked down on COVID-19 misinformation from doctors. The lawsuit claims that some doctors’ free-speech rights were violated because they spoke “against the mainstream Covid narrative.” He and other plaintiffs also filed a motion Tuesday that seeks a preliminary injunction to stop the defendants from investigating or sanctioning physicians for “speaking out in any public forum against the government endorsed Covid narrative.”

Stockton, a basketball Hall of Famer, has a street named after him in Salt Lake City and a statute of his likeness outside his former NBA arena there. He noted his mother and sister were nurses and that he grew up in an environment "where we trusted our doctors, took medications as prescribed and followed thevaccine schedule at the time."

He then apparently changed his mind, citing his NBA career and all the medical professionals he worked with, including the chiropractor who worked with his team, the Utah Jazz. Stockton recalled how he didn’t miss a game in 17 seasons but missed 18 games one season because of surgery (1997) and four more games another season (1989-90).

“Two of those games were because I got the flu and spent a night or two in a Charlotte NC hospital,” he said in the declaration. “That season, I had received the flu vaccine.”

John Stockton’s post-NBA cause

Stockton has been in the news before for his unscientific beliefs against vaccines and COVID restrictions. He played college basketball at Gonzaga in Spokane and had his season tickets there suspended for his refusal to wear a mask during games during the pandemic.

In the new filing he said he agreed to be a plaintiff in this lawsuit based on his “deeply held beliefs.”

In a separate recent interview with the Deseret News, he identified the chiropractor who influenced him as Craig Buhler, who worked with the Jazz. In 2022, Stockton wrote a letter to a federal judge in support of Buhler’s wife before she was sentenced to 30 days in prison in relation to her role in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

How John Stockton arrived at his beliefs

The new filing details how Stockton arrived at his beliefs, which includes anecdotes he heard but apparently didn’t verify and other personal experiences that haven’t been verified independently.  For example, he said his father went into sepsis within four days of receiving the flu shot and that this happened three years in a row. However, it’s not clear whether other factors could have caused any sepsis.

Referring to his bout with the flu in the 1989-90 season, Stockton said in his declaration that “I had just recently began learning about alternative medicine, like chiropractic, naturopathy, acupuncture, etc. as it was employed by our team trainer at the time.”

“My initial reluctance wavered over time as I saw the healing power of the human body,” the declaration said. “I saw remarkable results, healing from ankle and back sprains and tendonitis in hours instead of weeks. Family members healed overnight from health issues that medicines were unable to resolve. So, when our Chiropractor suggested that `maybe I should consider not vaccinating my children,’ I reluctantly listened. We still followed the prescribed schedule until one of our children was harmed noticeably by vaccines.”

Stockton didn’t say how his child was harmed or cite any evidence about how he arrived at this conclusion.

Stockton cites misinterpreted data

He also cited data that has been widely misinterpreted or has been used to intentionally mislead. Stockton claims drug company “Pfizer’s own report… acknowledges more than 42,000 adverse events for the Covid 19 shots and 1,200 deaths.”

This claim previously spread on social media but is false and not based on causal relationships between the vaccine and adverse events. In an interview with the Spokesman-Review in 2022, Stockton also made unfounded claims that “more than 100 professional athletes have died of vaccination.”

Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com