The Icon
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One of the myriad curiosities concerning the NBA logo is not that Jerry West was the basis – he definitely was, with only the league itself refusing to acknowledge that on account of its own copyright concerns – but more why he was the basis when it was designed in 1969, before he’d won even a single championship, nevermind an MVP. Wilt Chamberlain was the flash name; Bill Russell and Bob Cousy were the gold standard winners. George Mikan, the game’s first superstar, would also have been an option[1].
Instead, they chose a stencil based on a magazine cover, and West earned a nickname with no tie to his birthplace: “Zeke From Cabin Creek” (He was actually from Chelyan). Eventually, painstakingly, he would win a title as a player, and then several more in various roles with several of the best teams in NBA history. On Wednesday morning, the Los Angeles Clippers, the last team for which he worked after a tireless life in basketball, announced that West had passed away at 86.
If Russell changed the game without the ball, and Wilt maximized the game with it, Jerry West expanded what a guard could be. Along with 1960 Olympic teammate Oscar Robertson, the idea of a combo guard – that is, one who could set up teammates via passing as well as setting up their own shots, comfortably – came to be. Part of it, most of it, was due to their shared undeniability in either role[2]. The gold medal was inevitable; it would be West’s greatest team triumph for twelve years, though he always held it in high regard personally.
Several times over, posts expressed that the best thing that could’ve happened to West was to die during the Finals, and particularly during a Finals in which the Boston Celtics were mercilessly succeeding. As a part-time advisor to a team not in this series, if he was watching at all, I’d have to guess that Jerry West was fuming at anybody and everybody on either team who missed a rotation or blew an open elbow jumper (the likes of which, incidentally, the Celtics don’t shoot all that often).
Following a troubled childhood during which basketball became the outlet, West Virginia’s Jerry West arrived in Los Angeles in 1960, the year the Lakers moved from Minneapolis. His abusive father pushed him to the limit, and he had a brother who died in Korea. The hard nose was hard-earned. West persisted, at times with a shotgun under his bed, just in case. Always a shooter.
Alas: by the time West headed in his surname’s direction, Russell had been in Boston for a minute already, lost once in 1958, and decided he was never going to lose again. His Lakers teammate, later to become the head coach under his managerial purview, Pat Riley referred to West as one of his best friends before adding, “a great player, a genius, and also one of the most miserable people I’ve ever met in my life because he was so depressed and down when we’d lose.”
With Elgin Baylor in tow, the Lakers won so much, but always lost. Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside were Baylor and West, respectively. Making a habit out of storming through the playoffs only to lose, every time, to the Celtics, had to have been frustrating[3]. (Not the first to say this, but: Jerry West getting himself out of reality before the Celtics won another title, insofar as it could’ve been, seems like a choice).
Bringing Wilt Chamberlain into the fold just as Baylor’s body was breaking down was a masterstroke of team construction, enabled by the Big Dipper’s threat of a move to the ABA. West thrived in the fastbreak, and with a target like Wilt at center, he could maneuver into the paint, pass it out to Gail Goodrich or whomever, or dump it off to the most dominant center who has ever lived.
Grainy though it may be, you see pick-and-roll excellence working out in a variety of ways with the early seventies Lakers, West usually at the helm. His winding, nomadic pursuit of a favored spot on the floor found followers in Jordan, Kobe and the rest.
In winning the 1972 title, West has described a feeling of overwhelming relief rather than joy, his own guilt over Baylor’s retirement following him into retirement. Later on, a much-repeated theme seems to have been West not being able to watch any of the teams he was working for at the time, instead choosing to sit in his car or walk around a given arena’s tunnels.
But oh, the teams he would see: first, as a rather unsuccessful head coach but then as a very successful general manager, with the Lakers, overseeing the Magic-Kareem Showtime Era with his old buddy Pat Riley as head coach; after winning an Executive of the Year award before trading for Kobe Bryant and signing Shaq in the same week, he would win a title before finally leaving the only NBA team he’d ever known.
With the Memphis Grizzlies, West once again constructed a competitive team, trading for Pau Gasol and laying the groundwork for what would become the Grit and Grind era. That West, the NBA’s first truly great jump shooter, would also oversee the coming together of the Curry-era Golden State Warriors was only too appropriate.
West talked immense amounts of trash, up to and including to a prime Kobe. He pitched fits, mainly aimed at himself but occasionally against rivals, his own teammates and/or the team he had himself constructed; perhaps relatedly, he seemed to truly care about the mental health of players.
He was a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient for, if I had to guess, the same reason he was made to be The Logo. Nevertheless, Jerry West was a singular presence in early pro basketball, somebody who always looked for an edge and couldn’t stand when anybody else figured it out before he did. He lived the entirety of the NBA and, though he never seemed to have found peace himself, never relinquished the rope. Go West, young man: heed the advice.
[1] Paul Arizin? Bob Pettit??
[2] Yes, Cousy could give you 20 and 7 for an MVP – but if anybody had thought to coin the term “double-double” in his time, he would’ve averaged just that at some point between ’53 and ’62, and then we’re getting into Steve Nash territory.
[3] [SPOILER ALERT] I’ve always wondered how West felt about beating the Knicks, rather than the Celtics, in 1972 for his only NBA title. Of course he only cared about winning. And yet—