(FILES) Former Los Angeles Lakers’ normal supervisor Jerry West (L) factors to Lakers legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (C) and Earvin “Magic” Johnson throughout a ceremony the place Abdul-Jabbar unveiled a statue of himself at Staples Heart in Los Angeles on November 16, 2012. | GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP
Obsessive perfectionism and a lethal bounce shot made Jerry West, who died on Wednesday at age 86, one of many best guards in NBA historical past.
His uncompromising will to win and encyclopedic data of the sport additionally made him one of many league’s all-time nice executives.
An All-Star in all 14 years of his enjoying profession with the Lakers, West grew to become a byword for brilliance.
(FILES) NBA legend Jerry West appears on throughout the 2019 Basketball Corridor of Fame Enshrinement Ceremony on the Symphony Corridor in Springfield, Massachusetts, on September 6, 2019. | AFP
READ MORE: Basketball legend Jerry West useless at 86
Earlier than Michael Jordan’s hovering silhouette launched a billion shoe gross sales, the determine of West slicing towards the basket supplied the template for the NBA’s crimson, white and blue emblem.
“He reduce so quick and darted so unexpectedly that the person guarding him all the time regarded as if he had been making an attempt to catch a feather on an enormous wave,” Los Angeles Occasions columnist Jim Murray wrote in 1993.
“Jerry West might do every part Michael Jordan might do and his 25,192 profession factors show it.”
Jerome Alan West was born on Might 28, 1938. He grew up poor in West Virginia, haunted by his older brother David’s loss of life within the Korean Struggle and afraid of his bodily abusive father.
“Whenever you had a father who beat you, as mine did, for causes I’m nonetheless making an attempt to fathom, it’s onerous to think about your self as very particular, as deserving of acclaim,” West wrote in an unflinching autobiography in 2011.
The memoir pulled the curtain again on a life during which West used basketball to battle despair and nervousness — with stunningly profitable outcomes.
A two-time All-American at West Virginia College, West starred with Oscar Robertson on america 1960 Olympic gold medal crew in Rome.
The Minneapolis Lakers selected West with the second total choose behind Robertson within the 1960 NBA Draft — then promptly moved to Los Angeles, the place West would set up himself as an NBA star.
West was the third participant in league historical past to achieve 25,000 factors, after Wilt Chamberlain and Robertson. He departed the league holding data for profession post-season scoring and the best common in a playoff sequence.
Startlingly, West’s relentless drive to succeed yielded only one NBA title, in 1972.
West’s Lakers reached the NBA Finals 9 occasions. Their eight defeats included six to the Boston Celtics.
Individuals take a look at the statue of late NBA legend Jerry West by artists Omri and Julie Rotblatt Amrany at Crypto.com Area in Los Angeles on June 12, 2024. West, who died on June 12 at age 86, is taken into account one of many best guards in NBA historical past. The determine of West slicing towards the basket supplied the template for the NBA’s crimson, white and blue emblem. | AFP
Within the seventh sport of the 1969 championship sequence, West performed with a leg damage and had 42 factors, 13 rebounds and 12 assists because the Lakers succumbed to the Celtics but once more.
West, who poured in 43 factors in sport one of many sequence, was named Most Priceless Participant of the ’69 Finals — the one NBA Finals MVP from a dropping crew.
“Los Angeles has not received the championship,” Celtics middle Invoice Russell mentioned, “however Jerry West is a champion.”
Jerry West: Basketball Nice is ‘Mr. Clutch’
He was definitely the participant the Lakers turned to when it mattered most. The participant nicknamed “Mr. Clutch” delivered one of the vital well-known buzzer-beaters of all time — a 60-foot swish that tied sport three of the 1970 NBA Finals towards the New York Knicks.
“There wasn’t a greater clutch participant within the historical past of the NBA than Jerry West,” mentioned Pat Riley, who coached the “Showtime” period Lakers of the Eighties — groups that West, as normal supervisor, helped put collectively.
West loved modest success teaching the Lakers for 3 seasons within the Nineteen Seventies, compiling a 145-101 document and reaching the playoffs three groups.
However within the entrance workplace, he excelled.
(FILES) Los Angeles Lakers legend Jerry West and Kobe Bryant #24 of the Los Angeles Lakers have fun after the Lakers defeated the San Antonio Spurs in Recreation 5 of the Western Convention Finals throughout the 2008 NBA Playoffs on the Staples Heart in Los Angeles, California, on Might 29, 2008. | AFP
West received eight championships as an government or membership adviser. Six of these got here with the Lakers, together with as architect of the three-peat as the person who signed Shaquille O’Neal and drafted Kobe Bryant.
He helped flip the struggling Memphis Grizzlies right into a playoff crew within the early 2000s and would assist mould the Golden State Warriors right into a dynasty earlier than heading again to Los Angeles to function a marketing consultant for a Clippers crew wanting to problem the Lakers’ Southern California hegemony.
In 2019, US President Donald Trump awarded West the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“It by no means ceases to amaze me, the locations you possibly can go on this world chasing a basketball,” West mentioned upon receiving America’s highest civilian honor. “I swear my title goes to seem like a misprint on this checklist.”
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