What a loss for basketball
It’s hard to imagine a basketball world without Jerry West.
West, who passed away Wednesday morning, was a great rarity. He was a tremendously gifted basketball player, so central to the NBA’s legacy that his silhouette became the league’s logo. But he became an even greater executive. Only Red Auerbach, who turned Boston into an immense powerhouse, accomplished more as an executive than West did.
West built the Showtime Lakers around Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson, making both bold and shrewd moves to add players like James Worthy (West got the #1 draft pick in the 1982 draft after trading Don Ford to Cleveland), Michael Cooper, a 3rd round pick and a Hall of Famer, and Kurt Rambis, who West picked up as a free agent.
Later, he got Kobe Bryant in a draft deal with the Charlotte Hornets for aging Vlade Divac and then got Shaquille O’Neal in a trade. The Lakers won five titles with the Showtime team and five with Bryant.
It must have been incredibly satisfying for West to see the Lakers tie Boston for the most titles at 17 since the Celtics tormented him as a player, always beating the Lakers when they met in the Finals. West got his one and only ring as a player in 1972, two years before the end of his epic career.
As great as West was as a player and executive, he probably didn’t enjoy his accomplishments as much as he should have because he had a life-long struggle with mental health, suffering from depression.
West grew up in rural West Virginia and said that for a time he slept with a shotgun under his bed in case he had to shoot his abusive father. Basketball became his refuge, and though he was small and sickly as a boy, ultimately he grew to 6-3 and became a brilliant talent.
His life in many ways was a race between his astonishing daring on the court and the heartbreak he could never escape.
One hopes that his death gave him peace from the torment that followed him his entire life, but the world, and the basketball world in particular, is far poorer without him.
Two final notes: West died before he was to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor, which he might have enjoyed, and before the Celtics could win another championship, which one suspects he would not have enjoyed at all.
