The Los Angeles Clippers announced Wednesday that Jerry West, the inspiration behind the NBA’s logo, died peacefully at home at the age of 86.
One of the most accomplished figures in basketball, West was a fixture in the sport for eight decades, winning nine championships as a player, scout, coach, executive and consultant. West was instrumental in leading the Los Angeles Lakers to 10 championships in the 1980s and 2000s and was an advisor to the dynasty-building Golden State Warriors.
Long before West established himself as the greatest general manager in NBA history, he was one of the league’s first superstars. A West Virginia high school and college basketball legend and co-captain of the 1960 U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team, he played in the All-Star Game every season of his 14-year career, was selected to the All-NBA 12 times and was a five-time All-Defensive selection, all with the Lakers.
He appeared in nine NBA Finals and won only one title, a heartbreaking loss to Bill Russell’s Boston Celtics in the final six title series. His 1969 Finals MVP award remains the only time the honor has been awarded to a member of the losing team. He averaged 37.9 points in the seven-game loss to the Celtics.
“He took losses harder than any player I’ve ever known,” the late legendary Lakers announcer Chick Hearn once said of West. “He’d sit there by himself, staring into space. Losses just took his soul away.”
A pioneering scoring guard and relentless competitor, West was a fearsome shooter even before the advent of the three-point line, his most famous shot being a 60-foot buzzer-beater that sent the game into overtime against the New York Knicks in Game 3 of the 1970 Finals. He became the first player in the league to score 25,000 points, joining Chamberlain and Oscar Robertson. West averaged 27 points, 6.7 rebounds and 5.8 rebounds for his career.
The late Hot Rod Hundley once called the West Virginia native and Lakers teammate “the greatest competitor I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t matter what kind of play he’s making, he wants to win. His nickname was ‘Mr. Clutch,’ and he lived up to it, because every time we were in that situation, he made that shot.”
West’s pursuit of perfection led to unprecedented success as an NBA front office decision maker, earning him two Executive of the Year honors. First as a scout and then as GM, he helped build the “Showtime” Lakers, who won five championships in the 1980s. Before leaving the Lakers in 2000, West signed Shaquille O’Neal in exchange for the draft rights to Kobe Bryant, laying the foundation for five more championships from 2000-2010.
West led the Memphis Grizzlies for five seasons before retiring from full-time shot-calling in 2007 at age 69. He joined the Golden State Warriors’ executive team in 2011 and is known for opposing the Klay Thompson-for-Kevin Love trade in 2014 and recruiting Kevin Durant in the 2016 offseason. West left the team in 2017, when the Warriors won their second of four championships, to join the Los Angeles Clippers in the same capacity, where he helped recruit Kawhi Leonard and the trade for Paul George in July 2019.
West also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2019.
West’s personal life was less glamorous than his basketball career. The son of a coal mining electrician in West Virginia, West’s childhood was troubled by the death of his older brother in the Korean War in 1951. In later years, West became a mental health advocate, and in 2011 he wrote a New York Times bestselling memoir, “West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life,” about his lifelong struggle with depression.
“The highest honor a man can receive is the respect and friendship of his peers, and you have that more than anybody I know,” Russell told a Forum audience at “Jerry West Night” in 1972. “Jerry, you’re a true champion in every sense of the word. If I could be granted one wish, it would be for you to always be happy.”
One of West’s five children, Jerry, is currently a professional scout for the Detroit Pistons.
