Jerry West Dies: Nicknamed “The Logo,” The NBA Legend Who Built Showtime-Era Lakers & Kobe-Shaq Dynasty Was 86

Denise Petski
·8-min read
Jerry West Dies: Nicknamed “The Logo,” The NBA Legend Who Built Showtime-Era Lakers & Kobe-Shaq Dynasty Was 86

Jerry West, the basketball legend who led the Los Angeles Lakers to a championship in 1972 as a player, built the team’s “Showtime” and Kobe-Shaq-era dynasties as general manager and whose silhouette inspired the NBA logo, died Wednesday morning in Los Angeles. He was 86.

West was “the personification of basketball excellence and a friend to all who knew him,” the Los Angeles Clippers, for whom he most-recently worked, said in announcing his death. West’s wife, Karen, was by his side when he died, the team said.

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He won nine NBA titles as a player and executive spanning 45 years, seven with the Lakers and two with the Golden State Warriors. He also was a two-time NBA Executive of the Year in 1995 and 2004.

“Jerry West was a basketball genius and a defining figure in our league for more than 60 years,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. “He distinguished himself not only as an NBA champion and an All-Star in all 14 of his playing seasons, but also as a consummate competitor who embraced the biggest moments.”

West joined the Lakers just as the team relocated from Minnesota for the 1960-61 season. A 14-time All-Star, he led the team to six NBA Finals that decade but lost to the Bill Russell-led Boston Celtics each time. West was named MVP of the 1969 NBA Finals despite losing to Boston — the only player to ever achieve that feat. In 1970, he made one of the most famous shots in NBA history — a buzzer-beating 60-foot swish to send Game 3 of the Finals into overtime. It was one of many moments that inspired West’s other nickname: “Mr. Clutch”

But the Lakers went on to lose that game, and the NBA title, to the New York Knicks. He finally got a ring in 1972, when the Lakers beat the Knicks for the championship.

He became the Lakers’ coach for the 1976-77 season, two years after retiring as a player. West’s teams made the playoffs each of his three years in the job but never advanced past the Western Conference Finals. By all accounts, West disliked the role. He then was a scout for three seasons, during which the Lakers drafted Magic Johnson and won the 1980 NBA title, before taking over as Lakers general manager in 1982.

In 1981, amid turmoil in the team’s coaching ranks, owner Jerry Buss held a confusing press conference in which he sought to explain he was splitting the coaching role between West and then-assistant Pat Riley. Amid a flurry of probing questions, a typically-blunt West took to the mic and contradicted Buss, throwing his full support behind the relatively-untested Riley

“First of all, I’d like to clear up one thing. I’m going to be working for Pat Riley,” West said. “I think my responsibility is to him because I feel in my heart that he is the head coach”

Then the magic really began.

With West as GM and Riley as coach, the Lakers became the signature team of the ’80s, winning four more championships led by Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy as the NBA exploded in popularity. The team’s intense rivalry with the Larry Bird-led Celtics became one of the most bitter and exciting in sports.

Magic Johnson said today of West, “the only reason we have 17 NBA championships is because of Jerry West and his expertise drafting players, trading for players, and hiring the right coaches.”

On a personal note, said Johnson, “He was there in my highest moments, winning 5 NBA Championships, and in my lowest moment when I announced my HIV diagnosis and we cried together for hours in his office.”

Those legendary ’80s teams were chronicled in HBO’s 2022-23 drama series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, in which Jason Clarke played a rather angry version of West that the NBA legend did not appreciate. West also appeared as himself in an episode of Arli$$ and in Kyrie Irving’s comedic homage to streetball, Uncle Drew.

West was the architect of the Lakers’ championship three-peat from 2000-03, having made a Draft Day deal to acquire a 17-year-old Kobe Bryant in 1996. The move was controversial, and made Bryant the then youngest-ever player drafted, but West was certain. He called Bryant’s pre-draft workout the best he’d ever seen, as the teen torched Lakers’ Hall of Famer Michael Cooper — a former Defensive Player of the Year and eight time All-Defensive team pick — who had retired just five years prior. Bryant, who shared West’s singular focus on greatness, later said he considered him a surrogate father, even after West left the Lakers.

Soon after acquiring Bryant, West convinced the best big man in the league to come to the Lakers, creating the most dominant duo in NBA history.

“All Jerry West did was tell the truth,” said Shaquille O’Neal of his conversations the Laker exec in 1996. “When I was leaving Orlando, he brought me here and told me the truth. I would have a young team and a guy named Kobe. That guy’s going to be good, but in a couple of years, ‘You’re going to have championships.’ It wasn’t no ‘Get you this’ or ‘Get you that.’ Jerry’s not that type of guy.” (A seven-year, $120 million deal likely helped convince the big man, as well.)

In 2002, West left the Lakers to become GM of the Memphis Grizzlies, who recently had relocated from Vancouver. West steered that club for several seasons before joining the Golden State Warriors’ front office. During his six-year stay in Oakland, West helped build a team around guard Steph Curry that culminated the the franchise’s first NBA title in 40 years, another two seasons later, and set the stage for two more.

Warriors owner Joe Lacob posted a lengthy tribute today.

In 2017, he returned to Los Angeles as an executive for the Clippers, helping the perennial also-ran L.A. franchise attract the biggest free agents in the game when, in 2019, the team signed Kawhi Leonard and Paul George. West remained an executive with the team until his death.

Clippers owner Steve Ballmer also paid tribute on the team’s X profile.

Born on May 28, 1938, in Chelyan, WV, West starred for the West Virginia University Mountaineers before being drafted second overall by the brand-new Los Angeles Lakers in 1960 — behind fellow NBA all-timer Oscar Robertson. The duo would co-captain Team USA to a gold medal at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.

As a pro, West excelled in all facets of the game. He made the NBA All-Star team every season during his 14-year Laker playing career from 1960-74, including being All-NBA for five straight seasons — twice. He was the NBA scoring champion in 1970, led the league in assists in 1972 and made the All-Defensive Team four straight years from 1970-73.

His 27-points-a-game career scoring average remains fourth all-time, and he trails only Michael Jordan in all-time playoff scoring average. West also held the NBA record for scoring 20-plus points in 25 consecutive NBA Finals games, a mark later topped by Jordan. He also holds the NBA record for highest scoring average in a single playoff series with 46.3 in a six-game series against the Baltimore Bullets in 1965.

He was named as one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history for the league’s golden anniversary season in 1996-97 and inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1980. His No. 44 jersey was retired in by the Lakers in 1983 and still hangs in the rafters at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.

Tom Tapp contributed to this report.

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