He played for the Lakers as a high-scoring, accurate shooter and future franchise executive. The NBA adopted his picture as their logo.
Jerry West, who rose from the coal fields of West Virginia to become one of the best players in basketball history, a defining character in the Lakers’ history, and a physical symbol of the game whose silhouette appears on the National Basketball Association’s logo, passed away on Wednesday. He was eighty-six.
His death was declared by the Los Angeles Clippers, but no other information was given. In recent years, West served as a consultant for the group.
From 1960, when the Lakers relocated from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, to his subsequent roles as scout, coach, and executive, West had a significant impact on the development of the NBA in general and the Lakers in particular over a forty-year period first draft choice.
Along with multiple generations of Laker teams and players, he won championships and was an all-star in each of his 14 seasons. That close-but-no-cigar frustration that accompanied West for the majority of his career on the court may have never befallen a bigger player, save for his longtime friend, the legendary forward Elgin Baylor, who passed away without winning a title.
The Lakers were nearly always in the running for the championship during West’s career, but he had the misfortune of playing during a time when the Boston Celtics, led by Bill Russell, were the best team in the world and had defeated the Lakers six times in the Finals.
The Lakers didn’t win until they got their own giant, Wilt Chamberlain, and even that only came after four seasons and a seventh-round loss to the Knicks in 1970.
The Lakers of 1971–1972 set a record with 69 wins; subsequent records were set by the Chicago Bulls of 1995–1996 with 72 and the Golden State Warriors of 2015–16 with 73, including an unbroken 33-game winning streak. Speaking with a massive sense of relief following the last game, West recalled that his drive for the ultimate success started before he entered the professionals. They eventually exacted revenge on the Knicks and won the 1972 title. His team advanced to the national finals against California in 1959, his junior year at West Virginia University, but lost by a single point.
After West scored 23 points and the Lakers defeated the Knicks 114-100 to win the series in five games, he declared, “The last time I won a championship was in the 12th grade.” “This is a fantastic feeling,” he continued. I am going to truly enjoy this summer.
West was more successful as general manager of the Lakers. In 1985, he guided a squad that featured James Worthy, Magic Johnson, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to a championship, finally exacting revenge on the Celtics. He repeated the feat in 1987 and 1988.
He triumphed once more in 2000 while serving as executive vice president (he held the position of super-general manager, with personnel power) after acquiring Kobe Bryant through trade and signing Shaquille O’Neal as a free agent. After that season, West left the Lakers, but the squad he helped build won two more titles in a row.
West, a long-armed, quick-shooting guard who competed from 1960 to 1974, is among the best backcourt players in NBA history. Even by the standards of the day, he wasn’t particularly large at 6-foot-2 or 6-foot-3 and far under 200 pounds: Taller and more muscular than he was, his famous contemporaries Oscar Robertson, John Havlicek, and, a little later, Walt Frazier were skilled at posting up opposing guards. Havlicek was a forward as well.
Although West was known to play through ailments, including breaking his nose nine times, he was a swift and strong jumper with a lightning-fast right-handed release, which let him get off a shot against bigger, stronger opponents.
While he wasn’t the best passer in the league, he was one of its best dribblers, dishing out almost seven assists per game, and grabbing more rebounds than the typical guard (almost six per game). He possessed exceptional court sense, tremendous stamina, a constantly energetic presence on the court that is now commonly referred to as a great motor, and rapid hands-on defense.
Performing Well Under Duress
However, he was most likely recognized for his ability to perform well in high-pressure scenarios in crucial games, as well as for his desire for the ball and ability to make shots when the game was close.
One of the most iconic shots in league history was made by West in the 1970 finals versus the Knicks. His buzzer-beating shot from beyond half court knotted the game with the Lakers trailing two minutes remaining. The Lakers lost in overtime because the three-point shot was not yet legal (the NBA did not adopt it until 1979).
“I prefer to shoot the ball if it comes down to one shot,” West famously remarked. I’m not concerned about it. It stays out if it doesn’t enter.
With 31.2 points per game in the 1969–70 season, West led the N.B.A. in scoring; in four seasons, he scored more than 30 points per game; and throughout his career, he averaged 27 points during the regular season, which ranks third in terms of points scored at the time of his retirement (after Chamberlain and Baylor).
He was, however, much more effective during the playoffs, where he scored over thirty points per game seven times, including forty-six in 1964.
He averaged 37.9 points in the 1969 finals against the Celtics, including 42 in the game that decided the series. He also had 13 rebounds, 12 assists, and spearheaded an agonizing fourth-quarter rally that was tragically cut short by one basket. He was named the series’ Most Valuable Player, which remains the only instance in which the MVP of the finals has been a losing player. The Celtics were ecstatic with compliments afterward.
The legendary coach Red Auerbach, who was the Celtics’ general manager at the time, referred to West as “the greatest player in the game” and said that West’s performance in a losing effort was among his best ever.
“Tall Tales: The Glory Years of the N.B.A.” author Terry Pluto was told by John Havlicek, “the guy I felt sorry for in those playoffs was Jerry West” (2000). He was utterly devastated, yet he was also very great. I approached Jerry as soon as we left the court and told him, “I love you and I just hope you get a championship.” Like everyone other who has ever played this game, you truly deserve it. Though he was too distraught to speak, you could sense his complete and utter despair at losing.
Getting Hired as an Executive
“West is certain that talent supersedes coaching in the business of basketball,” according to Roland Lazenby’s 2010 biography of the player. Cooke sold the team following the 1979 season, and Jerry Buss, the new owner, wanted West to stay on the team, but West didn’t like sitting on the bench. But Buss recognized that West was interested in player evaluation and wanted him to assume an executive role on the team. In 1982, after the Lakers, under the leadership of Magic Johnson and Abdul-Jabbar, had won their second championship in three years, Buss named West general manager.
West actively fostered team dynamics. His selections in the draft included a number of players who went on to become mainstays for the Laker team: James Worthy (first overall in 1982, ahead of Dominique Wilkins); A.C. Green in the first round of 1985; and Vlade Divac in the first round of 1989 to replace Abdul-Jabbar, who had retired after 20 years as the league’s most dominant player.
In 1983, West traded popular guard Norm Nixon to the San Diego Clippers (now the Los Angeles Clippers) in a six-player transaction that also included Byron Scott. Following his retirement in 1991 due to his disclosure of having tested positive for HIV, Magic Johnson and West attempted to produce another one-two punch along the lines of Abdul-Jabbar and Johnson or Chamberlain and West.
He ultimately accomplished it in a week in 1996, dealing Divac to the Charlotte Hornets for Kobe Bryant, a recent draft pick fresh out of high school, and signing Shaquille O’Neal, a big guy who had just become a free agency. The outcome: The Lakers advanced to the NBA Finals ten times in 20 seasons, from 1982 to 2002, winning five titles and missing the playoffs just once.
Following his departure from the Lakers, West played five seasons with the Memphis Grizzlies (2002–2007), a team that had never won more than half of its games in any of its prior seven seasons. The Grizzlies finished 50-32 in West’s second season as head coach, the first of three straight seasons in which they made the playoffs.
After winning the league in 2015, he went on to become a board member of the Golden State Warriors, who the following year fell short of LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals despite having a record-breaking regular season. It has been reported that West had a hand in the acquisition of all-star free agent forward Kevin Durant after that loss.
After meeting Martha Jane Kane while attending college, West’s first marriage to her ended in divorce. In 1978, he wed Karen Bua. David, Mark, Michael, Ryan, and Jonnie were West’s five sons. It took some time for full details about his survivors to become accessible.
West’s personality has come under attack in recent years. According to both West’s book and Lazenby’s biography, West was a rigorous, merciless self-examiner and a disturbed perfectionist who was, in his own words, “aloof and inscrutable,” “possessed of a demon-filled mind,” and unable to completely enjoy his many accomplishments.
Jason Clarke’s portrayal of West in the HBO series “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” from 2022 depicted West as an unreasonable, impulsive, and temper-tantrum-throwing executive who was still carrying the weight of his prior setbacks. Following the launch of the show, West’s legal representative issued a statement in which they called West’s portrayal on the show “deliberately false,” “egregious,” and “cruel” and requested an apology and retraction.
“The series and its depictions are based on extensive factual research and reliable sourcing,” HBO said in a statement defending the program.
West admitted to having a complex personality. He wrote, “I am not someone who walks a straightforward line, nor am I a conventional person or thinker.” “I’ve always been too defiant and rebellious for that. If I may use that phrase, I would describe myself as mysterious (even to myself, especially to myself), compulsive, and someone whose thoughts wander widely before returning to the subjects that, for better or ill, have me enthralled.
West continued, saying he wrote the book to “explain the mystery of that person,” who is implied by the 1969 N.B.A. emblem, which has an oddly hazy past. The image displays a thin athlete in a midstride, facing forward and dribbling with his left hand while maintaining an elegant body angle. The player is depicted in white silhouette against a background of red and blue.
The league has never formally recognized it as West. Though some people have complained that the logo is outdated and that the figure should be recognizable as a Black star, like Michael Jordan, because it resembles him enough.
Alan Siegel, the logo’s designer, was profiled by The Los Angeles Times in 2010. Of course it’s West, he replied, but he selected a picture of West that really caught his attention rather than picking West as the model.
“It was flawless,” Siegel remarked. It felt like it was moving and was vertical. It was just one of those instances where everything fit.
Regarding himself, West said to The Times that he felt uncomfortable making the comment but that it would be flattering if he was the model. He remembered thinking, “That looks like somebody familiar,” when he first viewed Siegel’s drawing.
The following was corrected on June 12, 2024: This obituary’s previous edition erred in the number of games the Golden State Warriors won (73). Not the 2014–15 season, but the 2015–16 season was it.
The year that West Virginia University’s team fell to California in the national semifinals was incorrectly cited in a previous edition of this obituary. Not 1958, rather 1959.
An earlier version of this obituary misrepresented West’s career average of 27 points per game in the regular season due to an editing error. Not the sixth-highest number in NBA history, but rather the eighth-highest.
