Jerry West shared everything but the pain

The Lakers' brilliant guard and general manager dies at 86 after a storied, haunted career.

The running finally stopped on Wednesday. For nearly every day of his 86 years, Jerry West was chasing something or hearing footsteps, with NBA championships in his sights, and defeat and heartache and dark memories closing in.

When Bill Russell went to the Forum microphone on Jerry West Night in 1972, he turned to West and said, “If I had one wish granted, it would be that you would always be happy.” If that wish ever came true, West never acknowledged it. Restlessness was his fellow traveler.

His wins disappeared into vapor. His losses were permanently implanted. West said the two most bitter honors he ever received were MVP awards in defeat, first in the 1959 Final Four with West Virginia and then the 1969 NBA Finals with the Lakers. His Lakers lost six NBA Finals to Boston when he played, and two others to the Knicks, sandwiched around the 1972 trophy they won, on a team that had a 33-game win streak.

West’s games in their postseasons were similar to Pickett’s charge. He averaged 30.9 points in his playoff games, 30.5 in Finals games, and 37.3 in that ‘69 Finals loss to the Celtics, when the Lakers finally got a Game 7 in The Forum but inflamed the Celtics by storing balloons above the scoreboard, to be released upon victory. That disgusted West. He never wanted to give the Celtics a cause.

Yet he kept climbing back into the ring, “swinging at the moon in the water,” as the band Dawes would later sing. 

West’s first act qualified him, easily, as one of the ten best players in the history of the game, and it is hoped that the commentators and fans who think basketball was midwifed by ESPN will read his tributes and obits and try to understand. West was in nine Finals in 14 seasons and averaged 27 points and 6.7 rebounds, with no 3-point line on the floor. When Elgin Baylor was hurt in 1965 and the Lakers had to beat Baltimore in the Western Conference Final, West averaged 46.1 points, still the record for a playoff series. Typically, he was an MVP runnerup four times but never won it.

If he played today we would know how many shots he blocked and how well he graced the defensive metrics. He was fully 6-4 ½ with unnaturally long arms. “They talk about his offense but I hated it when he guarded me,” said fellow Hall of Famer Dave Bing. He was inexhaustible and got to the foul line 9.4 times per game in his career.

Then came his second act. In some ways it was better.

By the time West became the Lakers’ general manager, they already had Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and they had already brought the Lakers two championships. With West, they won three more. His first move was set up for him, because the Lakers had traded Don Ford to Cleveland for a first-round pick that became first overall in the 1982 draft. West went against the grain and took James Worthy instead of the flashier Dominique Wilkins. He also dealt Norm Nixon to San Diego for the pick that became Byron Scott. Now the Lakers were younger and faster, and Showtime hit a new gear.

Later, owner Jerry Buss would set up a trade to Dallas: Worthy for Mark Aguirre, a friend of Johnson’s. West stood in front of that door. “If you make this deal,” West told Buss, “you’ll need two press conferences, since I’ll be leaving.” Buss didn’t make the deal.

But West saved his masterpiece for 1996. On June 26 he traded Vlade Divac to Charlotte to pick up Kobe Bryant, who had just graduated from Lower Merion High near Philadelphia. Today that seems like a tap-in, but not then. The league was skeptical of Bryant’s maturity and physicality. But West had already seen Bryant dominate Michael Cooper at a workout at the Inglewood YMCA. He left after 15 minutes, totally sold.

Then West pursued Shaquille O’Neal, who was just freeing himself from Orlando. West dumped George Lynch and Anthony Peeler on Vancouver to release salary-cap room, then gave O’Neal a 7-year, $120 million deal on July 18, as O’Neal was preparing for the Atlanta Olympics. O’Neal was late for a meeting with West, who was in the 36th floor Hyatt Regency suite of agent Leonard Armato. “Leonard, I’m jumping out the window if he doesn’t get here soon,” West said. Finally O’Neal showed up, signed on the line, and West later entered a hospital with exhaustion. Three seasons later the Lakers began a 3-year run of championships.

West attended the Lakers’ final practice before they began the 1996 season. When he could trust that he wasn’t being quoted, he was endlessly opinionated and unintentionally hilarious. Years later, Scott was coaching the Lakers when they acquired an aging center. “That guy’s team has been trying to get rid of him for three years,” West said. “Byron called me and said, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘Byron, you just got your ass fired.’’

But when Bryant came out to shoot that day, West grew quiet. Finally he said, “He’s going to be the Tiger Woods of basketball.” And that pretty much happened.   

When Bryant, O’Neal & Co. won the 2000 title by beating Indiana at home in Game 6, West was not at Staples Center. Instead he was driving aimlessly on Mulholland Drive, with the radio off. The PTSD from all those Boston losses had captured his nervous system. It was reminiscent of 1985, when the Lakers were in the process of winning a championship in Boston at long last, and the cable went out and West had to fire up the radio and listen to  Chick Hearn, one of the few whose Laker-induced mood swings could rival West’s. “He was a maniac, watching those games,” said Jerry’s son Ryan, who was celebrating a birthday at the time.

Running from his childhood fueled West’s run for glory. His dad was an electrician for a coal mining company, and he beat Jerry, to the point that West hid a shotgun under his bed, preparing for the day when worse would get worst. West also absorbed physical pain from his mother when he would come home late for dinner, having spent hours shooting hoops by himself. He was traumatized by the death of his brother David, killed in the Korean War in 1951, and Jerry’s teachers and acquaintances couldn’t find his personality with a miner’s lamp. But he grew into the state’s best player, went to West Virginia, and had 10 of the Mountaineers’ 25 field goals in their 71-70 finals loss to Cal. West scored 28 with 11 rebounds.

The Lakers drafted West and moved from Minneapolis to L.A., and West remembered the days when he and Baylor would tour neighborhoods and use loudspeakers to urge people to come to the Sports Arena. But West and Baylor only had to ask them once. The Lakers became a sensation, even though they lost a playoff Game 7 to the St.Louis Hawks by two points, as West scored 29. 

More important, West was like thousands of other Eastern refugees who became enchanted with palms and sunshine, and the freedom of possibility. He became an Angeleno for life, even after he left the Lakers to work for Memphis and Golden State. He lived in Bel Air and once shot a 28 on the front nine of the country club, eventually shying away from golf because it wasn’t a challenge.

By then he was basketball’s ultimate authority, beloved by everyone but himself. All one needs to know about West can be contained in the NBA’s official logo, which features his silhouette. At first the logo made West uncomfortable, but he did like one aspect of it. It showed him dribbling with his left hand. He had worked on that for years, he said. Thus a man from a town of 776 people became the brand for a massive, worldwide sporting business. His image never required a caption.

As Scott Howard-Cooper related in his book “Kingdom Of Fire,” West and John Wooden often hung out at Hollis Johnson’s diner, a refuge behind a drug store in Westwood. One day Wooden asked West if he took all the credit when his teams won. West said, no, of course not. “Well, then,  Jerry,” Wooden said, “when your team lost, there is no reason for you to take all the blame.”

West and Bill Walton would sometimes have lunch at that same diner. Now they are both gone, within a 17-day period, and the hole in basketball’s soul gets wider. Wishing peace for West might be too much. The running is over, and rest is enough.