To say the NBA world is hurting today would be an understatement.
Jerry West, one of basketball’s greatest players, a signature figure in the history of the Los Angeles Lakers and a literal icon of the sport — he is the silhouette on the logo of the National Basketball Association — died on Wednesday at the age of 86.
For the better part of 60 years, Jerry West was the personification of the sport. He was part of a dynasty as a player that couldn’t solve the Celtics, and then built dynasties as an executive that finally did. He was a 14-time All-Star and 12-time All-NBA selection.
As an executive, West’s name became synonymous with the Lakers’ most dominant era, as he helped craft the franchise’s “Showtime” dynasty. The Lakers won five championships in the 1980s with West as general manager and a team led by Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy.
In the following decade, he was instrumental in bringing Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal and Phil Jackson to the Lakers, laying the foundation for another run of titles.
West had eternal swag, the way Dr. J and Pat Riley and only a handful of aging luminaries still do. He was still in high demand after he left the Lakers in 2000, moving on to executive roles with the Memphis Grizzlies, Golden State Warriors and LA Clippers well into his 80s.
It was West’s steadfast refusal to sign off on a proposed trade of Klay Thompson for Kevin Love in 2014 that kept Golden State’s ownership from pulling the trigger, and kept the Splash Brothers from being split up before they went on their franchise-changing championship run.
West doesn’t take a back seat to anyone when it comes to talent evaluation. He was the best ever. No former superstar as a player was in more gyms in more small towns and in more countries than West was, year after year, trying to find the next great talent. He didn’t get stuck in nostalgia; he still got excited about current players. He raved about Terance Mann when Mann was a little-known second-round pick playing for the Clippers in the Vegas Summer League in 2019.
He kept his own counsel about who, and what, he liked.
And for all of his accolades as an executive, the best the NBA has ever had, West the player was just as good.
West is set to be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame for a third time this year as a contributor. He had already earned induction to the hall in 1980 as a player and in 2010 as a member of the storied 1960 Olympic Team, which captured a gold medal in Rome. In addition to the Hall of Fame, West was named to three NBA legacy teams: the 35th Anniversary Team, NBA at 50 and the 75th Anniversary Team.
West spent his 14-year NBA playing career with the Los Angeles Lakers, scoring 25,192 points — a number that trails only Kobe Bryant’s 33,643 for the most in team history. He made the All-Star Game every season of his career, was All-NBA First Team 10 times, won NBA Finals MVP in 1969 — in a series his team lost — and captured a championship in 1972.
West began stacking NBA accolades with an All-Star appearance in his rookie season. In his second season, he averaged 30.8 points per game and led the Lakers to the NBA Finals, where they fell to Bill Russell, Tom Heinsohn, Bob Cousy and the Boston Celtics in seven games.
Winning the NBA Finals would prove elusive. West and the Lakers lost in the championship round seven times — six to the Celtics — before defeating the New York Knicks to win the championship in 1972. Four of those series losses came in seven games.
West is still the only player to win NBA Finals MVP on a losing team, an award he earned for averaging 37.9 points and 7.4 assists in the 1969 finals against Boston. His abilities spurred the nickname “Mr. Clutch,” and the NBA named its Clutch Player of the Year Award after West in 2022.
Two years after winning his lone title as a player, West retired at age 36 in 1974 during training camp for the upcoming season, announcing his decision at an emotional news conference at The Forum in Los Angeles.
“The major reason for my retirement is because I have set high standards for myself that I’m not willing to compromise,” he said, according to The New York Times. “I have seen other players play longer than I thought they should have. I did not want to do that.”
Now 25th on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, West’s 25,192 ranked third when he retired, trailing only Wilt Chamberlain (31,419) and Robertson (26,710) at the time.
A three-year stint as the Lakers’ coach ended with West’s resignation in 1979, less than a month after Jerry Buss purchased the team. But he didn’t stray far, working as a scout for three years before taking over as general manager in 1982 — just as the “Showtime” Lakers were hitting their peak. He would spend 18 years in that position, departing in 2000 after the first of three titles won by the team led by Jackson, O’Neal and Bryant.
“Jerry West was more than a general manager, he was a great friend and confidante,” Magic Johnson said in a statement on X. “He was there in my highest moments, winning 5 NBA Championships, and in my lowest moment when I announced my HIV diagnosis and we cried together for hours in his office.
“Every time I achieved a goal or crossed a milestone, one of the first calls I received was from Jerry West. … Beyond his basketball accolades as a basketball player and NBA executive, Jerry West was a great man, a leader of men, fiercely loved his family and friends, and despite holding jobs with other franchises, he was a Lakers fan for life.”
West’s influence on the next generation of players was widely felt in the NBA community, including by Michael Jordan, who called West “a friend and mentor” who was “like an older brother.”
“I valued his friendship and knowledge,” Jordan said in a statement Wednesday. “I always wished I could have played against him as a competitor, but the more I came to know him, I wish I had been his teammate.
“I admired his basketball insights and he and I shared many similarities to how we approached the game. He will be forever missed! My condolences to his wife, Karen, and his sons. RIP, Logo.”
In May 2011, just under a year after purchasing the Warriors, Joe Lacob added Jerry West to the team’s executive board. West was instrumental in the early moves that built the Warriors dynasty. He was a presence of credibility and a sounding board of expertise in the infant stages of the remaking of Golden State.
One of his first big influences early on was the drafting of Klay Thompson a month later. West was then a major voice in the organization for keeping Thompson as the Warriors considered trading him for All-Star forward Kevin Love. He helped in the recruiting of Kevin Durant, one of the biggest free agent coups in NBA history.
By the time West reached the Clippers, he had nine NBA championships to his name. But the one as a player will always be special for how challenging it was to obtain.
In the joyous locker room following their 114-100 win over the Knicks in Game 5 to clinch their first title in Los Angeles, West, who had lost all seven previous NBA Finals series, was elated.
“It’s an unbelievable feeling … something I always wanted to experience,” West told the Los Angeles Times in 1972. “Now, I know what it feels to be a champion.”
But West was also not one who lacked introspection, even at his highest moments.
“I’ve been in this locker room so many times and it’s been so quiet,” West said in ’72. “What an amazing feeling now. It may take me a day to fully realize what happened. All of those things that happened in the past — maybe this will make up for it.”
In the locker room, a steady stream of well-wishers — then-Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke and Knicks guard Jerry Lucas, West’s 1960 Olympic teammate, and Dave DeBusschere — offered their congratulations.
Then, there was one more familiar face in the Lakers’ locker room: Russell, the Celtics great. The 11-time NBA champ, who was there as a commentator for ABC, won seven of those rings against the Lakers and six of those against West.
In the scrum, Russell reached out and put his hand on West’s shoulder. According to the Los Angeles Times, they exchanged a glance that old foes could understand.
“Congratulations,” Russell said.
“I know now how you felt all those times,” West said.
As Russell turned away and readied for his TV duties, someone asked him how he felt for West.
“I’m just glad,” Russell said, “to see this finally happen to him.”
And anyone who knew West, knew him to be compassionate, but obsessive. Finally capturing that elusive championship healed a lot of wound.
The word tortured is often used to describe West. Indeed. Demons, which took root during a difficult and lonely childhood in his native West Virginia, where his imagination was his best friend and he shot thousands of shots so that he wouldn’t have to return home, ate at him throughout his life. There was little love in the West home, and physical abuse of the children at the hand of their father. Jerry West was driven, in the best and worst sense of that word, to strive, to chase perfection, to be hollowed out by defeat and only briefly salved by victory.
He could be caustic and cutting about today’s players, the state of the game, David Stern and anyone else who didn’t measure up to his standards at a given moment. He could be withering about his own team. But if they weren’t winning doing it their way, he had very little patience for them. The portrayal of him in the HBO miniseries “Winning Time” was an ugly caricature of his manic intensity, one that made his friends and colleagues justifiably angry. He wasn’t someone who foamed at the mouth and spent his days trashing the offices at The Forum in some blinding rage. He didn’t big-time people.
And if anyone could have done so without argument, it was him.
But at the core West was compassionate, but obsessive. Caring but stifling. Just watch his tribute to Kobe Bryant on TNT after his passing, you’ll see his soft side. For him at his purest, watch the way he lit up talking about young talent.
West lived chasing perfection, and while it is an impossible bench mark to reach, he sure did have an all world life.
Without West, there is a void left in the shape of the NBA logo. But his legacy will live on forever in the shape of his silhouette, in the record books, and more importantly in the lives he impacted.
