Jerry West, the famous Lakers person and eventually manager and general director who reached record highs after failing to live up to his own absurd high standards, passed away.
Regarded as a nearby god through the NBA, West died Wednesday with his wife, Karen, by his part, the Los Angeles Clippers announced. AP even confirmed his departure. He was 86.
He was and continues to be ranked as one of the best players to ever play in the NBA. It only seemed appropriate that his image may appear on the NBA logo on every uniform and every piece of merchandise related to the sport.
In each of the three times he was in charge, he took his staff to the playoffs and never had a losing season as a manager.
In establishing the Lakers as a kingdom, he led some of the greatest teams in Lakers story, from developing the sniping Kobe Bryant & Shaquille O’Neal number to developing the now smooth Magic Johnson- Kareem Abdul- Allah” Showtime” unit. In his 18 months as a Lakers professional, he led the team that won two more headings after he retired, and the Lakers made it to the NBA finals eight days.
His statue — it looks a lot like the brand — stands in front of Crypto.com Arena, passive testimony to his Olympic gold medal, his NCAA Final Four most- excellent- player award, his niche in the Basketball Hall of Fame, his 14 All- Star game appearances, his 27- point scoring average, his most- useful- player awards in both the NBA finals and the All- Star game, his professional- of- the- year awards, his game- tying 63- foot shot against the New York Knicks in the 1970 finals, his” Mr. Clutch” nickname, and on it went.
Impressive accomplishments, most would agree. West thought otherwise. With him, it was n’t so much what he’d done. The missed shots, the lost games, the almost- but- not- quite championships, these were the things that stuck with him, that turned basketball, the thing he loved most and did best, into daily torture.
” I have a hole in my heart, a hole that can never be filled”, he acknowledged in his 2011 autobiography,” West by West: My Charmed and Tormented Life”, written with Jonathan Coleman.
Not that there were n’t ample reasons for frustration. In that circumstance, Bill Russell and the wraithful Boston Celtics were significant players. So did injuries. His knee, ankle, and hamstring issues were as frequent as they were legendary, and playing west despite a chronically broken nose was a given. As a guard, West was always compared to Oscar Robertson, and although they played the same position, they played it much differently. As a coach, he could have used a Jerry West on the court. And there was a distant Phil Jackson watching as the run for general manager-vp came to an end.
Before all of that, though, there was that “underachieving” Jerry West. He always believed he could have done more and done it better, regardless of what he did or how well he did it.
In 1999, he told The Times,” I ca n’t tell you what the day of a game was for me.” ” It was nervous, anticipation, coming to compete and, more importantly, to win. If we lost, it was always my fault, it was n’t anyone else’s fault. I do n’t care how well I played or how well I did n’t play, it was my fault. And if I did play very well, that made it even worse”.
And those days were all about him playing. He jitterily watched games from an entryway in the stands, if he could make any himself watch at all as the general manager. He occasionally walked through the parking lot and occasionally watched a movie. And once, while he was leaving the arena for a championship game, he drove around L.A. and asked to be called on his phone when it was over. After Bryant and O’Neal had finally become Lakers, thanks to months of his machinations, he was hospitalized for treatment of nervous fatigue.
Fred Schaus, who coached West both in college at West Virginia and as a pro with the Lakers, once said,” He is a very complicated wound- up spring, a bundle of nerves. He is so strung that I have never seen him fully relaxed in all the time I’ve known him.
Schaus also noted,” If you sat down to build a 6- foot 3- inch basketball player, you would come up with a Jerry West. He is the man that has everything — a fine shooting touch, speed, quickness, all the physical assets, including a tremendous dedication to the game”.
That reference to “dedication” might have been massive understatement. West , existed , for basketball.
Born May 28, 1938, West was the fifth of Cecile and Howard West’s six children. They lived in Chelyan, West Virginia, a hardscrabble coal- mining town outside Charleston. His parent’s marriage was strained, work was often scarce and money was always a problem. West’s mother was a demanding perfectionist, and his father, although a gregarious, outgoing man, had a short fuse and was a firm believer in corporal punishment.
Recalled West in his book states,” We ate the same soup out of the same pot for six days until I told my mother I simply could n’t do it any longer. Let me tell you that when my father beat me that day, it made me a tough, nasty kid and made me even more inward than I already was. Later, West revealed that he had depression from that point on.
He never felt sorry for it, I said. But I made a promise to myself that I would do everything in my power to prevent it from occurring again. I cheated on my courage by telling him so, telling him he should never touch me again, and reminding him that I have a shotgun under my bed and would use it if I had to.
West’s idol as a youngster was David, his older brother by nine years. From David, young Jerry got the attention he could n’t get from his parents. However, David joined the Army after high school and had few prospects in Chelyan or its twin town, Cabin Creek, before being killed in the Korean War. Devastated, Jerry sought solace with David’s old basketball, shooting for hours at a neighbor’s house or a makeshift basket he’d put up in the backyard.
” I did it. I put it up myself”, West told author Roland Lazenby in” Jerry West: The Life and Legend of a Basketball Icon” ( 2009 ). ” Back then, you learned to do things for yourself. I once lived close to a bridge, and there was an old hoop that had been torn down underneath it. No one used it, so I took it. The backboard was plywood. Occasionally there’d be a net.
” I was in the fifth or sixth grade. I was little and skinny. I was by myself, and the other guys could n’t let me play pickup football. I found out you could play basketball by yourself, so that started it.”
And play, he did — morning and night, winter or summer, through meals, before school, after school.
He was still in his early years at East Bank High, where he was not considered varsity material, and he was still short and skinny. However, one summer he experienced a growth spurt, returned in September half a foot taller than he had in June, and helped his senior team win the West Virginia state championship. Then, following in the footsteps of his favorite player, the exuberant, flashy Hot Rod Hundley, he accepted a scholarship to play for his favorite team, the Mountaineers of West Virginia University.
There, although he was n’t as flashy as Hundley, he was every bit as deadly. As a shooter, he was in a class by himself. However, he also acted sneakily defensively; his specialty was to steal the ball from behind, and he reacted with the best of them with quickness, strong leaping ability, and long arms.
It was in college, though, that West got an inkling that, perhaps, basketball did n’t love him as much as he loved basketball. The Mountaineers won unbeaten home games and a sure-fire draw on the road in his three varsity seasons, which were prior to the time when freshmen were not allowed to play. His junior season, they won the Southern Conference championship and a bid to the 1959 NCAA tournament, advancing to the title game against UC Berkeley, then coached by Pete Newell.
West had a great game, scoring 28 points, taking down 11 rebounds, leading a West Virginia comeback from a 13- point deficit while playing with four fouls— and losing, 71- 70, on an awkward put- back shot by Cal’s Darrall Imhoff, later West’s Lakers teammate.
Years later, West recalled”, I had my hands on the ball about midcourt with no time left on the clock and I said,’ If I could have just gotten one more shot.’ ” Even so, he was voted outstanding player of the tournament, a rarity, considering his team had lost.
West Virginia entered the tournament again the following year, but it stumbled in the regional round. Still, West was an All- American for the second time and was named co- captain of the U. S. team for the 1960 Summer Olympics. He and Robertson led the USA to the championship in Rome while playing for Newell, before moving on to the NBA.
West, a first-round pick of the then-Minneapolis Lakers, found himself instead aiming for Los Angeles. Owner Bob Short had relocated the Lakers franchise to what he believed would be more green pastures on the West Coast, and the NBA in those early days was largely a sports afterthought. But few in L. A. paid any attention.
Still, the Lakers had a burgeoning star in forward Elgin Baylor, and once Schaus, who had moved to the Lakers from West Virginia, decided that West would be as effective in the pros as he had been in college, the Baylor- West tandem went to town. The Lakers, with Los Angeles coming to realize that the team might be worth watching, won Western Division titles in 1962,’ 63,’ 65,’ 66,’ 68 and ‘ 69. And in the finals, Russell and the Celtics defeated them each time.
The loss in 1969 was the most galling. The Lakers came back from Boston for Game 7 at the Forum with the series tied at three games each. After purchasing the team from Short and creating the new arena in Inglewood, Jack Kent Cooke saw the end of a Lakers championship. He had thousands of inflated balloons suspended from the rafters before the game, which Cooke regarded as a certainty, to be released with great fanfare when the Lakers won.
West, playing despite a heavily taped pulled hamstring, scored 42 points but was not up to his usual defensive brilliance. Russell badly outplayed Lakers center Wilt Chamberlain, and the Celtics won the game, 108- 106, and their 11th NBA title. The balloons stayed in the rafters. West, though, again in a losing effort, was voted MVP.
The Lakers played for the title again in 1970 but again were frustrated, losing to the New York Knicks, despite West’s, and perhaps basketball’s, most spectacular shot. With three seconds left in Game 3, the Knicks were leading 102-100 when West intercepted an inbounds pass from Chamberlain at the far end of the court, dribbled twice, and then let fly two steps beyond the key, the ball swishing through as time expired. The long-shot basket only put the game into overtime because there was no three-point shot in the NBA at the time. The Knicks won the game, and eventually the series in seven games, after West missed all of his subsequent five shots.
The Lakers and West finally captured the championship in 1972, defeating the Knicks in five games to wrap up a stunning 69-win season that included a still-record 33-game winning streak.
West later recalled”, What’s so ironic about ‘ 72 is that I played terrible in the finals. It did n’t seem to be justice for me personally. In the years leading up to our loss, I had made a significant contribution. And now when we win, I was just another piece of the machinery, so to speak.”
When he changed his mind and retired in the fall of 1974, he played two more seasons and intended to play one more. West sued for backpay after a falling-out with him over money, and he turned his attention to golf, which he nearly equally enjoyed playing as well as basketball. He once shot a 65 at the Bel- Air Country Club, including 28 on the back nine. A few years later, he and Cooke resolved their differences before Cooke hired him as the Lakers coach.
Coaching ate at West, though — he wanted perfection and, of course, could n’t get it — and he was happy to leave it behind and become a scout- consultant after three seasons. After Jerry Buss had purchased the Lakers and fired then-coach Paul Westhead, there was an awkward occurrence several years later. West objected, saying he would only help the inexperienced young Riley get started, which he did for two weeks when he announced that he would be replacing Westhead with West and Pat Riley as co-coaches.
The Lakers became one of the most valuable franchises in sports after Riley and West had great success as coaches. Still, even as he was preparing for retirement, there was turmoil. Jackson, by then, was very successfully coaching the Lakers, and clashing with West. At one point, Jackson, saying he wanted to speak to the team in private, asked West to leave the locker room. West later stated that he thought Jackson had “absolutely no respect for me.”
In a 2011 interview with The Times, West said,” I told Jerry Buss to hire him. You want a relationship with your coach, but winning was the only thing that mattered to me. There was no relationship.”
West made his retirement plans, but the Memphis Grizzlies called two years later and he was getting bored. In his five years as vice president at Memphis, he accepted their offer and made the Grizzlies a playoff team.
Then, in his 70s — while also serving as executive director of the Northern Trust Open golf tournament — West signed on as a consultant with the Golden State Warriors and, making good use of his recommendations, they, too, became a championship team. In 2017, he signed on as a consultant with the Clippers, calling it the” last adventure” of his life.
West was indignant at his portrayal a raging, foul- mouthed and sometimes intoxicated executive in the 2022 HBO’s docudrama” Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” a fly- on- the- wall look inside the team’s” Showtime “ere. West claimed that his character in the movie, who is one seen tossing a championship trophy through an office window, was” cruel” and far removed from the truth. He demanded a retraction.
Times columnist Bill Plaschke agreed, saying — in L. A. circles — the portrayal would be akin to mocking Sandy Koufax, ridiculing John Wooden or trashing Vin Scully.
” Instead of exploring his issues with compassion as a way to better understand the man, they turn him into a Wile E. Coyote cartoon to be laughed at,”  , wrote , Jabbar”. He never broke golf clubs, he did n’t throw his trophy through the window. Sure, those actions make dramatic moments, but they reek of facile exploitation of the man rather than exploration of character.”
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Kuper is a former Times sport writer.
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