Jerry West, who emerged from West Virginia coal country to become one of basketball’s greatest players, a signature figure in the history of the Los Angeles Lakers and a literal icon of the sport — his is the silhouette on the logo of the National Basketball Association — died on Wednesday. He was 86.
The Los Angeles Clippers announced his death but provided no other details. West was a consultant for the team in recent years.
For four decades, first as a player and later as a scout, a coach and an executive, West played a formidable role in the evolution of the N.B.A. in general and the Lakers in particular, beginning in 1960 when the team moved from Minneapolis to Los Angeles and he was its first draft choice.
He won championships with several generations of Laker teams and Laker stars and was an all-star in each of his 14 seasons, but except for his longtime teammate, the great forward Elgin Baylor, who retired without a championship, there may have never been a greater player who suffered the persistent close-but-no-cigar frustration that followed West for the bulk of his career on the court.
During his tenure, the Lakers buzzed almost perpetually around the championship, but West had the misfortune to play while the Boston Celtics, with Bill Russell at center, were at the height of their indomitability — they beat the Lakers in the finals six times.
It wasn’t until the Lakers acquired their own giant, Wilt Chamberlain, that they triumphed, but even that took four seasons — and a seventh defeat in the finals, to the Knicks in 1970 — to accomplish.
The 1971-72 Lakers won 69 games, a record at the time — the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls won 72 and the 2014-15 Golden State Warriors won 73 — including a still unequaled streak of 33 in a row. When they avenged their loss to the Knicks, winning the 1972 championship, West spoke after the last game with a colossal sense of relief, recalling that his thirst for the ultimate victory began before he entered the pros. In 1958, his junior year at West Virginia University, his team made it to the national finals against California, only to lose by a single point.
“The last time I won a championship was in the 12th grade,” West said after he scored 23 points as the Lakers beat the Knicks 114-100 to capture the series in five games. He added: “This is a fantastic feeling. This is one summer I’m really going to enjoy.”
As the Lakers general manager, West succeeded more often. He led a team that included Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson and James Worthy to a championship in 1985 — at last sweet revenge against the Celtics — and again in 1987 and 1988.
In 2000, as executive vice-president (his role was as a super-general manager, with the authority over personnel), he won again, having brought aboard Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal. West left the Lakers after that season, but the team built largely on his watch won two more championships in a row.
As a long-armed, sharpshooting guard, West, who played from 1960-74, is on anyone’s short list of the finest backcourt players in the history of the game. At 6 foot 2 or 6 foot 3 and well under 200 pounds, he wasn’t especially big, even by the standards of the day: His great contemporaries Oscar Robertson, John Havlicek and, a bit later, Walt Frazier were taller, brawnier men adept at posting up opposing guards. (Havlicek also played forward.)
But West, who routinely played through injuries — his nose was reportedly broken nine times — was a quick and powerful leaper with a lightning right-handed release, all of which allowed him to get his shot away against taller, stronger defenders.
He wasn’t the finest dribbler in the league, but he was among its finest passers, averaging nearly seven assists per game, and his nearly six rebounds per game was better than average for a guard. He had quick hands on defense, enormous stamina, a relentlessly active presence on the court — a quality now often described as a great motor — and superior court sense.
He was probably best known, however, for excelling in tough situations and big games, for wanting the ball when the game was in the balance, and for making shots under pressure.
In the 1970 finals against the Knicks, West made one of the most memorable shots in league history. With the Lakers down by two and the clock ticking down, his buzzer-beating heave from beyond half court tied the game. The three-point shot was not in effect — the N.B.A. didn’t adopt it until 1979 — and the Lakers lost in overtime.
“If it comes down to one shot,” West said once, “I like to shoot the ball. I don’t worry about it. If it doesn’t go in, it doesn’t go in.”
West led the N.B.A. in scoring in 1969-70 with 31.2 points per game, he scored more than 30 points per game in four seasons, and he averaged 27 points during the regular season for his career, the 6th highest figure all-time in the N.B.A. — third highest at the time of his retirement (behind Chamberlain and Baylor).
But he was even better in the playoffs, when he averaged more than 30 points a game seven times, including 40.6 in 1964.
In the 1969 finals against the Celtics, he averaged 37.9 points, including 42 in the final game, in which he also had 13 rebounds and 12 assists and led a fourth-quarter comeback that fell, heartbreakingly, a bucket short. He was named the Most Valuable Player for the series, still the only time a losing player has been the finals’ M.V.P. Afterward the Celtics were agog with praise.
Bill Russell called West “the greatest player in the game,” and Red Auerbach, the renowned coach who was then the Celtics’ general manager, called West’s performance in a losing cause one of the most brilliant he’d ever seen.
“The guy I felt sorry for in those playoffs was Jerry West,” John Havlicek told the writer Terry Pluto for his 2000 book “Tall Tales: The Glory Years of the N.B.A.” “He was so great, and he was absolutely devastated. As we came off the court, I went up to Jerry and I said, ‘I love you and I just hope you get a championship. You deserve it as much as anyone who has ever played this game.’ He was too emotionally spent to say anything, but you could feel his absolute and total dejection over losing.”
A full obituary will appear shortly.
