Jerry West: A Perfectionist in an Imperfect World
Just a few days after the passing of Bill Walton, another NBA icon is gone, and I feel sad. This is my profile of the great JERRY WEST.
He was born in Cabin Creek, West Virginia in 1938 and raised two miles west in Chelyan. His lifelong excellence in basketball was fueled by obsession and self-doubt.
His father, Howard West, was an electrician for a coal mine. Howard came home late and tired, rarely had time to play with Jerry, and exploded at him at unpredictable intervals.
As a young boy, Jerry was a good athlete, but small. He was always hard on himself, never satisfied. He fell in love with the bouncing, golden-brown basketball and the urgent ballet of the game. On the dirt basketball courts in Chelyan, when Jerry was five or six, he decided to be an excellent basketball player. He hated the fact that he lacked the arm strength to get the ball up to the rim of the 10-foot basket. That shameful memory stayed with him even as he became a capable young player.
Howard West beat Jerry with a belt. Any little thing that bothered Howard might set him off. His dad was the only person Jerry really wanted praise from, and he never got it. Sometimes the whippings were so bad that Jerry went to bed his throat raw, his chest constricted, wishing he could die. Once, he helplessly witnessed his father belt whip Jerry’s sister.
Jerry’s first two heroes in life were black men who excelled with their fists: Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson. Jerry looked up to his older brother David, but when Jerry was 12, David died in the Korean War. After that, Jerry retreated into basketball. He also got a shotgun, and warned his father he would shoot him if he ever tried to whip Jerry or his sister again. As a man, West always made a careful distinction between a house and a home. A house had four walls and a decent roof — a home had love in it. Jerry grew up in a house, always yearning for a home.
In ninth grade, he grew a little and decided he could now play the game without embarrassing himself. In the tenth grade, he shot up to 6’2” with outstanding quickness, reflexes and agility. Basketball people saw a lot of promise in Jerry West. But as a sophomore, West was cut from the East Bank High varsity and, on sweltering summer nights, as he shot the ball in front of his house again and again, West saw only his defects. Tall and well-coordinated, sure — but spindly, much too easily pushed around by stronger boys.
Jerry was serious about everything he did and couldn’t understand why other boys were not. What’s life if you don’t compete? As long as anyone was keeping score, Jerry burned to win. He looked back after his career was over and found “ridiculous” how fierce was his focus. During games, he was often unaware of the fans in the bleachers, or later in the arenas. All of his attention was on the court. Finally he decided he was just wired differently than most people.
He felt relieved to make the East Bank High varsity as a junior, and a little surprised to find himself the star of the team. He averaged 27 points a game, took all the big shots, and for long stretches carried the team, not just with his skills but with his feel for when the other team was momentarily impaired, their guard down, their defense vulnerable. There were glorious moments of rushing confidence.
Still, he focused on how often he came down with head colds, how easily he tired. While others marveled at his shooting, shot-blocking and feel for the game, Jerry was disgusted by his thin body, and how awkward he felt dribbling the ball or contesting a stronger player for a loose ball. Losses were a felt presence; wins were a way to drive that felt presence away — temporarily.
Many people in West Virginia felt Jerry West deserved to be picked for the All-State Basketball team as a junior — but Jerry did not. He felt being left off the team was a good thing; it would motivate him to improve.
But Jerry West was chosen for the Boys’ State congress — reportedly, on the basis of his schoolwork and civic responsibility. There were a lot of good basketball players at the Boys’ State congress, some of whom HAD made All-State. But at the end of the day, when they chose up sides for pickup basketball games, Jerry noticed he was always the first kid picked.
That gave him a lot of confidence going into his senior year, and as a senior he led underdog East Bank High to the state title. He averaged 32.2 points a game, and became the first schoolboy in West Virginia history ever to score over 900 points in a season. Each game was a pleasure to unwrap, the minor obstacles brushed off, the real ones confronted. He loved the teamwork, and having people to share the joy of winning with. He disliked the personal compliments he got when the game was over. Those comments were not going to help him navigate his life.
Over 60 college recruiters came to talk to West, and the pride that his fans in West Virginia felt for him mingled with a fear that some basketball powerhouse like Ohio State in a bigger, richer state than West Virginia would lure Jerry West away. When West decided to stay in state, to enroll at the University of West Virginia, it deepened West Virginia’s love for him.
The game was starting all over again, and Jerry had to prove himself at the next level. He became a two-time All-American at West Virginia. He led the Freshman team to 17–0 record. As a sophomore on the Varsity, he averaged 17.8 points a game. As a junior, he pushed his scoring to 26.6 points a game and, as a senior, to a regal 29.3 points per game. He led the Mountaineers to the 1959 NCAA Finals, and though they lost the game, West was voted the 1959 tournament MVP. He also co-captained the Gold-winning 1960 U.S. Olympic basketball team.
Despite all that, Jerry West told himself he was no lock to make an NBA roster. He was shocked when the Los Angeles Lakers made him the second overall pick in the NBA 1960 draft — behind only the great Oscar Robertson. No great shooter ever did more than Jerry West to avoid the label of being a selfish gunner. No one hustled more or was more reckless with his body. No one knows how many times Jerry West broke his nose playing ball — but it was at least 6 or 8 times.
In high school, all of his teammates and opponents had been white. During his long NBA career he saw the NBA become a mostly black league, and approved of that; it meant the league was drafting players on merit. It was black teammates whom West felt closest to as a pro, players like Ray Felix and Elgin Baylor. One day when Jerry was sitting on the bench brooding and doubting himself, Ray Felix told him, ‘Someday you’re going to become one of the best players in NBA history.’ That comment really sank in.
West played for 14 seasons in the NBA — and made 14 NBA All-Star games. He led Lakers teams into the NBA Finals six times. Any Jerry West team always felt it had a chance. West once made a 60-foot shot at the buzzer to tie an NBA Finals game against the New York Knicks.
His bread-and-butter move was his drive right, pull-up jumper. Defensively, he was also stellar — no one in NBA history has ever been better at defending the 2-on-1 break. Very intense, a perfectionist, he sometimes turned off more laid-back teammates. But everyone respected him.
When he met with fans, he tried hard to be gracious. His manner was friendly, and a little bland. He patiently signed autographs, his name always legible. But the public didn’t know him.
When Jerry West retired from the NBA, he was 3rd in total career points, 4th in points per game average; 2nd in free throws made; and — proof that he was no selfish gunner — 5th all-time in assists. He’d made the NBA all-defensive first team 4 different times. He was one of the few great two-way guards in NBA history — and West’s distinctive broken nose profile was the NBA logo.
But Jerry West had the misfortune to star for the Lakers during the Bill Russell era in Boston, when Celtics czar Red Auerbach was at his scheming best and the Celtics were a dynasty. So Jerry West and his Lakers reached the NBA Finals nine times but only won a single NBA title — while Bill Russell won 11 titles.
This was a very painful subject for Jerry West. He once noted “There’s more great stories in losing locker rooms than winning locker rooms, and no one cares to go there.” He described losing in the NBA Finals as like going to town and finding some mouth-watering candy behind a store window — you can see it, but you can’t touch or taste it.
Once, years later, West and Bill Russell were together somewhere and West surprised Russell by asking why the Celtics had always beaten the Lakers in the NBA Finals. Because we were the better team, replied Russell. Surely, West said, at least in some of those years, the Lakers had been the better team? Russell said no, that the lesser team may sometimes win a one-game championship but in a best-of-seven series, the best team always wins.
West had trouble accepting that from Russell; he was very aware that Bill Russell elevated the play of his teammates and he felt there must have been SOMETHING more that West could have done to elevate the play of the Lakers — some stratagem, some training edge, some motivational tool, some aspect of leadership he’d overlooked. Obsessively, he returned to the guilty thought that with just one title as a player, he’d sold himself short, and failed his teammates, coaches and fans.
When his playing career ended, he tried never to touch a basketball again. He had no interest whatsoever in playing pickup ball at a middling level. He’d worked so hard to set and meet a standard that playing half-assed games was repugnant. If he needed some light exercise, he’d play golf.
The Lakers asked West to coach the team, he did that capably for a time but didn’t enjoy it. Then he went on to do something better than any Hall of Fame player has done before or since — he became a General Manager. He worked for the Los Angeles Lakers, and later for the Memphis Grizzlies, and as a special advisor to the Golden State Warriors and the Los Angeles Clippers. It allowed him to use that rare ability to quickly gauge who was a star and who was only posing as one.
He didn’t enjoy the games much, though — often when the Lakers were in the midst of some tight playoff game, he’d walk out into the parking lot at the Forum, unable to stand the tension.
As a talent evaluator, he took seriously the difference between a shooter and a shot-maker. A good shooter knocks down open shots; a shot-maker can force the defense to yield a good shot. He brought Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant to Los Angeles, and the Lakers won title after title. Having succeeded brilliantly at the high school, college and pro level as a player, Jerry West had now proved brilliant at the executive level. He’d always sought out the next level in basketball, and now there were no more levels.
With all of the honors he won in basketball, with the Lakers winning NBA titles again and again, Jerry never played much role in the victory celebrations. His mind was exhausted and he still wondered if Howard West would be proud of him. He felt anger and sadness, and an emptiness inside. He would say, “I don’t seek compliments. I don’t want them, period.”
He tried to focus on the fact that he’d been able to make a good living doing what he loved — playing basketball, and then putting together basketball teams. Most people in this world don’t have the chance to make a living doing what they love most, and West knew that. The golden brown ball with black ribs that had fascinated him as a boy had also given him an entire life.
In an effort to purge himself of some of his worst memories, West finally wrote a memoir. In “West By West: My Charmed, Tormented Life,” he admitted that for most of his life he’d felt chased by something malevolent, haunted by a sense of failure. Completing that book, and publicly sharing it, seemed to give Jerry West at last a bit of peace.