Jerry West, who emerged from West Virginia coal country to become one of basketball’s greatest players, a signature figure in the history of the Los Angeles Lakers and a literal icon of the sport — his is the silhouette on the logo of the NBA, died Wednesday. He was 86.
The Los Angeles Clippers announced his death but provided no other details. West was a consultant for the team in recent years.
For four decades, first as a player and later as a scout, a coach and an executive, West played a formidable role in the evolution of the NBA in general and the Lakers in particular, beginning in 1960 when the team moved from Minneapolis to Los Angeles and he was its first draft choice.
He won championships with several generations of Laker teams and Laker stars and was an all-star in each of his 14 seasons. But except for his longtime teammate, the great forward Elgin Baylor, who retired without a championship, there may have never been a greater player who suffered the persistent close-but-no-cigar frustration that followed West on the court.
West played while the Boston Celtics were at the height of their indomitability — they beat the Lakers in the finals six times.
It wasn’t until the Lakers acquired Wilt Chamberlain that they triumphed, but even that took four seasons — and a seventh defeat in the finals, to the New York Knicks in 1970 — to accomplish.
The 1971-72 Lakers won 69 games, a record at the time — the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors won 73 — including a streak of 33 in a row that remains unequaled. When they avenged their loss to the Knicks, winning the 1972 championship, West spoke after the last game with a colossal sense of relief, recalling that his thirst for the ultimate victory began before he entered the pros. In 1959, his junior year at West Virginia University, his team made it to the national finals against California, only to lose by a single point.
“The last time I won a championship was in the 12th grade,” West said. “This is a fantastic feeling. This is one summer I’m really going to enjoy.”
As the Lakers general manager, West succeeded more often. He led a team that included Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson and James Worthy to championships in 1985, 1987 and 1988.
In 2000, as executive vice president, he won again, having acquired Kobe Bryant in a trade and signed Shaquille O’Neal as a free agent.
As a long-armed, sharpshooting guard, West, who played from 1960-74, is on anyone’s short list of the finest backcourt players in the history of the game. At 6-foot-2 or 6-foot-3 and well under 200 pounds, he wasn’t especially big.
But West, who routinely played through injuries — his nose was reportedly broken nine times — was a quick and powerful leaper with a lightning right-handed release.
West led the NBA in scoring in the 1969-70 season with 31.2 points per game; he scored more than 30 points per game in four seasons; and he averaged 27 points during the regular season for his career, the eighth-highest figure in NBA history.
But he was even better in the playoffs, when he averaged more than 30 points a game seven times, including 40.6 in 1964.
In the 1969 finals against the Celtics, he averaged 37.9 points, including 42 in the final game, in which he also had 13 rebounds and 12 assists and led a fourth-quarter comeback that fell, heartbreakingly, a bucket short. He was named the MVP for the series, still the only time a losing player has been the finals’ MVP.
Jerry Alan West was born in Chelyan, West Virginia, on May 28, 1938, and lived in several towns in the area southeast of Charleston along the Kanawha River, including Cabin Creek, the derivation of one of his later nicknames: Zeke from Cabin Creek. (With the Lakers, he was also known as Mr. Outside — Elgin Baylor was Mr. Inside — and Mr. Clutch.)
West was the fifth of six children of Howard and Cecile Sue (Creasey) West. His mother was a store clerk, and his father was a machine operator for an oil company and worked in the electrical shop at a coal mine.
Over three years at West Virginia University, he was twice named player of the year in what was then the Southern Conference and twice picked as a consensus All-American. He was paired in the backcourt with Oscar Robertson on the gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic team in 1960.
In his 14 pro seasons, West was named to the all-NBA first team 11 times.
Jack Kent Cooke, the Lakers’ owner, hired West as head coach in 1976.
In his first season, West led the Lakers to the NBA’s best record, 53-29, with Abdul-Jabbar as the league’s MVP, but they lost in the playoffs to the eventual champions, the Portland Trail Blazers. Two years later, Los Angeles once again lost to the eventual champs, the Seattle SuperSonics.
West’s won-lost record over three seasons as coach was 145-101.
In 1982, following a season that had brought the Lakers, led by Abdul-Jabbar and Johnson, their second championship in three years, Jerry Buss, who bought the Lakers after the 1979 season, named him general manager.
After leaving the Lakers, West spent five seasons, from 2002-07, with the Memphis Grizzlies. In West’s second year at the helm, the Grizzlies were 50-32, the first of the three consecutive seasons in which they qualified for the playoffs.
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