NBA Hall of Famer Jerry West passes away at age 86
- Thread starter KingTaharqa
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RIP
R.I.P.
R.i.p 2 guard in my all white starting 5
1.stockton (Luka in a few maybe )
2.west
3.bird
4.dirk
5.jokic
1.stockton (Luka in a few maybe )
2.west
3.bird
4.dirk
5.jokic
Jerry West was one of the most iconic figures in basketball history.
Undoubtedly one of the founding fathers of the NBA.
Job well done!
Undoubtedly one of the founding fathers of the NBA.
Job well done!
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NBA legend Jerry West dies at age 86
One of basketball's most accomplished contributors, West was a staple of the sport across eight decades, winning nine championships as a player, scout, coach, executive and consultant.
sports.yahoo.com
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I met Jerry West for the first time in 1979 at the Forum where he introduced me to Bill Sharman, Chick Hearn, and then Laker owner Jack Kent Cooke. My father, agent and I negotiated over lunch then Jerry took me to the locker room to show me my Lakers jersey. I started to cry and Jerry explained to me the expectation of wearing the purple and gold, how he saw my role, and how he envisioned me fitting into the organization. I’ll never forget that moment. When training camp began, he gave me so many golden nuggets and really critiqued every facet of my game. After every practice he would give me notes on how I could get better and those sessions carried over to the regular season. Once a week we went over what I needed to improve and how I could dominate in the league. Those meetings meant everything to me because I learned so much from him. We had a basketball camp in Hawaii called the Jerry West Magic Johnson Fantasy Camp for 20 years. At the camp we shared every meal together and that’s when we really bonded and solidified our great friendship outside of the Lakers. Jerry West was more than a general manager, he was a great friend and confidante. 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. Every time I achieved a goal or crossed a milestone, one of the first calls I received was from Jerry West. When I started my business, was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame, was named Lakers President of Basketball Operations – he would always pick up the phone and give me a personalized call to congratulate me. Beyond his basketball accolades as a basketball player and NBA executive, Jerry West was a great man, a leader of men, fiercely loved his family and friends, and despite holding jobs with other franchises, he was a Lakers fan for life. Laker Nation, 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. Today is a sad day for basketball fans and sports fans across the globe. Cookie and I are just devastated and continue to lift up his beautiful wife Karen; sons David, Mark, Michael, Ryan and Jonnie, extended family, and loved ones in prayer.
Jerry West, a 3-time Hall of Fame selection and the inspiration for the NBA logo, dies at 86
The Los Angeles Clippers announced that Jerry West, who was selected to the Basketball Hall of Fame three times, died Wednesday morning.
apnews.com
Jerry West, a 3-time Hall of Fame selection and the inspiration for the NBA logo, dies at 86
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BY TIM REYNOLDS
Updated 4:29 PM EDT, June 12, 2024
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The NBA has never confirmed the worst-kept secret in basketball, that Jerry West is the player whose silhouette is depicted in the league’s logo.
There’s probably a reason for that: West never wanted to be the logo.
“I’m just part of the game,” West said in a 2021 interview. “I never wanted to be any more than that. I’m extremely fortunate to have had the life that I’ve had, and that’s enough for me.”
His was a life like few others: an NBA and Olympic champion as a player, a champion as an executive and someone selected to be enshrined by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame not once, not twice, but three times. West died on Wednesday at age 86, the Los Angeles Clippers announced.
“We can only hope there is someone we meet during a crucial time in our lives that will change you in ways you could dream about,” said Miami Heat President Pat Riley, who played with and worked with West during their time together as Los Angeles Lakers. “Jerry was that person for me.”
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West, nicknamed “Mr. Clutch” for his late-game exploits as a player, went into the Hall of Fame as a player in 1980 and again as a member of the gold medal-winning 1960 U.S. Olympic Team in 2010. He will be enshrined for a third time later this year as a contributor, and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver called West “one of the greatest executives in sports history.”
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“He helped build eight championship teams during his tenure in the NBA — a legacy of achievement that mirrors his on-court excellence,” Silver said. “And he will be enshrined this October into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor, becoming the first person ever inducted as both a player and a contributor. I valued my friendship with Jerry and the knowledge he shared with me over many years about basketball and life.”
West was “the personification of basketball excellence and a friend to all who knew him,” the Clippers said in announcing his death. West’s wife, Karen, was by his side when he died, the Clippers said. West worked for the Clippers as a consultant for the last seven years.
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He was an All-Star in all 14 of his NBA seasons, a 12-time All-NBA selection, part of the 1972 Lakers team that won a championship, an NBA Finals MVP when the Lakers lost to the Boston Celtics in 1969 — the first year that award was given out, and still the only time it went to a player on the losing team — and was selected as part of the NBA’s 75th anniversary team.
“He was absolutely my basketball sage: wise, loyal and so much fun,” Clippers owner Steve Ballmer said. “If you were in his presence, you felt his competitiveness and his drive. He cared about everything and everyone. From the first day I met Jerry seven years ago, he inspired me with his intellect, honesty and enthusiasm. He never stopped.”
West was general manager of championship teams with the Lakers, helping build the “Showtime” dynasty. He also worked in the front offices of the Memphis Grizzlies, the Golden State Warriors and the Clippers. Among his many highlights as an executive with the Lakers: He drafted Magic Johnson and James Worthy, then brought in Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal to form a powerhouse title-winning duo.
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His basketball life bridged generations: West played with Elgin Baylor, whom he called “the most supportive and the greatest player of that era,” and Wilt Chamberlain. As a coach and executive, he worked with a who’s-who of NBA stars from the last 40 years: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Johnson, Worthy, O’Neal, Bryant, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard and Paul George among them.
“I marvel at them, at the joy they brought basketball fans all over the world,” West said in 2019.
Even in the final years of his life, West was considered basketball royalty. He routinely sat courtside at Summer League games in Las Vegas, often watching many games in a day while greeting long lines of players — LeBron James among them — who would approach to shake his hand.
“The game transcends many things,” West said while attending Summer League last year. “The players change, the style of play may change, but the respect that you learn in this game never changes.”
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James, on social media, offered his condolences: “Will truly miss our convos my dear friend! My thoughts and prayers goes out to your wonderful family! Forever love Jerry! Rest in Paradise my guy!” the NBA’s all-time scoring leader wrote Wednesday.
West is 25th on the NBA’s all-time scoring list. He knew he was the model for the league’s logo — a player dribbling a ball, set against a red-and-blue background — but suggested in recent years that he wouldn’t mind if the league changed it.
“While it’s never been officially declared that the logo is Jerry West,” Silver said in 2021, “it sure looks a lot like him.”
West is still the NBA Finals’ all-time leader in total points, along with field goals made and attempted as well as free throws made and attempted. He played in the title series nine times with the Lakers; his teams went 1-2 against the New York Knicks, and 0-6 against the Celtics.
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“Those damn Celtics,” he often said.
West also hit one of the most famed shots in finals history, a 60-footer at the buzzer of Game 3 of the 1970 series between the Knicks and Lakers to force overtime.
Tributes from across the sports world flowed freely Wednesday. The Los Angeles Dodgers released a statement calling West “an indelible figure on the Los Angeles sports landscape for more than 60 years,” and the NBA was planning a pregame tribute to West before Game 3 of the NBA Finals between the Celtics and Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday night.
West is survived by sons David, Mark and Michael from his first marriage to Martha Jane Kane, which ended in divorce. He and second wife Karen had two sons, Ryan and Jonnie, who is married to former LGPA Tour star Michelle Wie.
Riley recalled times where, after a Lakers shootaround practice, he and West would head to a nearby drugstore “to eat the best burgers, drink milkshakes and savor a great custard pudding with fresh whipped cream” before going home to nap and get ready for that night’s game.
Evidently, burgers, milkshakes and custard worked wonders for West.
“Jerry would kick (butt) in a way that was so skilled and relentless,” Riley said. “I was so proud to be there in his presence. I watched, I learned. He made me believe. Being in that aura of greatness was mesmerizing.”
Michael Jordan said he considered West “a friend and mentor — like an older brother to me.”
“I valued his friendship and knowledge,” Jordan said. “I always wished I could have played against him as a competitor, but the more I came to know him, I wish I had been his teammate. I admired his basketball insights and he and I shared many similarities to how we approached the game.”
A native of Chelyan, West Virginia, West was known as a tenacious player who was rarely satisfied with his performance. He grew up shooting at a basket nailed to the side of a shed and often shot until his fingers bled. He became the first high school player in state history to score more than 900 points in a season, averaging 32.2 points in leading East Bank High to a state title.
Basketball, he would later reveal, was his therapy.
In his 2011 memoir, “West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life,” West chronicled a lifelong battle with depression. He wrote that his childhood was devoid of love and filled with anger as a result of an abusive father. He often felt worthless, and to combat that, he said he put his energy into playing the game.
West led West Virginia University — where he is still the all-time leader in scoring average — to the NCAA final in 1959, when the Mountaineers lost by one point to California.
“Today is one of the saddest days ever for West Virginia University and the state of West Virginia,” Mountaineers athletic director Wren Baker said. “Mountaineer hearts all over the world are broken with the passing of the great Jerry West.”
A year after he won Olympic gold in Rome, West joined the Lakers, where he spent his entire pro playing career. He was honored as one of the league’s 50 greatest players in 1996 and when the league expanded the polling to 75 players to commemorate its 75th anniversary in 2021, West was selected again.
“You know, it never ceases to amaze me the places you can go in this world chasing a bouncing ball,” West said in 2019, when he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation’s highest civilian honor — by then-President Donald Trump. “My chase began in Chelyan, West Virginia, where I strung a wire basket with no net to the side of a bridge. If your shot didn’t go in, the ball rolled down a long bank and you would be chasing it forever. So, you better make it.
“I was a dreamer. My family didn’t have much, but we had a clear view of the Appalachian Mountains, and I’d sit alone on our front porch and wonder, ‘If I ever make it to the top of that mountain, what will I see on the other side?’ Well, I did make it to the other side, and my dreams have come true. I’ve been able to see the sides, thanks to that bouncing ball.”
Jerry West leaves an irreplaceable hole in the basketball world
A three-time Hall-of-Famer, West had an unmatched career, but he always preferred to look forward.
Jerry West leaves an irreplaceable hole in the basketball world
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Adrian Wojnarowski, ESPNJun 12, 2024, 01:01 PM ET
Until his final days, one of the remarkable lessons Jerry West taught was his pursuit of the present. He had an American life and stories like no one else, but he did not care for nostalgia.
I sent him a text of well-wishes on his 86th birthday in late May. His health had been deteriorating, his time was short. He acknowledged that in his response, and then requested: "Give me some NBA news regarding players leaving or signing elsewhere please...."
Free agency. The draft. Trades. His appetite was insatiable for the next episode in an NBA that he had constructed with his talent and vision and sheer ferocity. He still worked as an adviser for the LA Clippers and spent so many of his nights sharing his ideas on the games and players to the franchise's president of basketball operations, Lawrence Frank.
"He never stopped," Clippers owner Steve Ballmer said Wednesday. From Cabin Creek, West Virginia, to running with Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor as a Laker, to orchestrating the LA story of a teenage Kobe Bryant, to coaching, to his silhouette as the league's logo, no one else ever touched greatness in so many sectors of the sport. West will go into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame this summer -- for an unprecedented third time.
From the immortals to the fringe draft prospect he met in the team's practice facility, West had time for everyone -- forever free of pretense and platitudes. To watch men and women of a certain age approach him was something to see, as though he had walked down from Olympus and reached out to shake their hand.In many ways, West was a tortured soul. He described in painful detail how a childhood with an abusive father and the loss of his older brother in the Korean war seared a level of lifelong despair into him.
His autobiography was called, "West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life."
West was not a particularly joyous man, but he was loving and loyal and generous with his time and resources to those in his orbit and those he barely knew.
He loved to be in the employ of a team, so he could strategize and tinker and consider the possibilities of what could be -- not what was. He had unyielding respect and admiration for the modern players, and often used his own NBA Finals shortcomings to come to the defense of those currently under siege for failing to win as many championships as people thought they should.
As player empowerment started to move stars around the league, West once told me that he would've absolutely considered joining the Celtics had free agency been available to him in the 1960s and '70s. Even so, he still loathed landing in Boston and feeling all those old championship hardships. "It makes me physically ill," he told me once.
The disappointments cut him to the core, and West often bristled when presented with praise or awards. He leaves an unparalleled basketball and American life, the kid out of Cabin Creek, responsible for narrating generations of Lakers and NBA lore -- from Wilt and Elgin, to Kobe and Shaq. When I called to congratulate him on his third enshrinement into the Naismith Hall of Fame this winter -- as a player, a member of the 1960 USA Olympic team and now as a contributor to the game -- West sounded typically embarrassed and exasperated over the fawning and attention born of his yesteryear.
"Give it to the next guy," he grumbled. "Hey, what are you hearing out there?"
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Fuck him
R.I.P.
And college championship MOP in a loss