Jerry West, the NBA “logo”, has faded – Libération

The legend of the Los Angeles Lakers, on the floors then as manager, died this Wednesday, June 12.

A tormented character who was dogged by depression throughout his life, Jerry West died this Wednesday, June 12, at the age of 86. He was the “incarnation of basketball excellence,” said the Clippers – Los Angeles’ second team – where he had worked since 2017 as a consultant, without revealing the causes of his death. But it was with their rivals the Lakers, his favorite team, that the man left his mark on the NBA with his scoring talent, to the point of serving as a model for the official logo of the North American basketball league since 1969.

Jerry West, the personification of basketball excellence and a friend to all who knew him, passed away peacefully this morning at the age of 86. His wife, Karen, was by his side. pic.twitter.com/iMwOXmCT2B

— LA Clippers (@LAClippers) June 12, 2024

Bruised by a difficult childhood, Jerry West was also bruised by an incredible series of seven failures in the NBA finals. The supreme title finally won with his lifelong club, the Lakers, two years before the end of his career (1960-1974), never really compensated for the frustrations of the past: “There is a chasm in my heart that cannot can never be fulfilled,” said this formidable shooter, one of whose rare moments of pure happiness was the Olympic gold medal won in Rome in 1960.

Jerry West was born in Cabin Creek, a village in West Virginia, into a family of six children where he was beaten by his father. In 1951, at the age of 13, he was traumatized by the death of his older brother in the Korean War. He took refuge in solitude, silence and… basketball, every day for hours.

Unhappy player, successful general manager

Recruited in 1960 by the Lakers, who had just moved from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, he formed a flamboyant duo with another great player, Elgin Baylor. But six times, his hopes were shattered by Bill Russell’s invincible Boston Celtics team. Until the end of his life, he hated going to the Massachusetts metropolis.

His personal prestige continued to rise, but only belatedly materialized into collective success. In 1969, he was the only player in history to be voted best player in the NBA finals despite losing, thanks in particular to his 42 points in the final game. “It was awful, I really wanted to quit basketball, it was too painful,” he later admitted.

After the Celtics, it was the New York Knicks who became his great rivals in three finals in four years in the early 1970s. In the second, West finally lifted the coveted trophy, but this joy “never erased the pain of certain defeats. The following year, he lost an eighth final, against the Knicks.

Of average height for his sport (1.91 m), the man who alternated between the back and leader positions had the gift of scoring in the most tense moments. Fourteen times selected for the All Star Game, the friendly match bringing together the best players in the league, he was also an excellent defender. He finished his career averaging over 27 points per game, at a time when the three-point shot did not exist.

After his retirement as a player in 1974, he coached the Lakers from 1976 to 1979 then became general manager from 1982 for two decades which corresponded to the golden era of the franchise (8 titles between 1980 and 2002) – with among others the immense Magic Johnson. He also orchestrated the successful recruitments of Kobe Bryant and then Shaquille O’Neal. He then joined the board of directors of the Golden State Warriors in 2011, with whom he won two NBA titles, then the Clippers in 2017.

In 2011, married with five children, he presented a very dark image of himself in an autobiography entitled “My charmed, tormented life”, where he described himself as a “distant, inscrutable person and unpredictable” that his “inner demons” had always prevented him from appreciating his successes.