| | Tortured.
|  | | Jerry West was with the Lakers for nearly 40 years and was a part of seven championships. |
It is the one word that immediately comes to mind when one thinks of
Jerry West.
Was he ever happy? Was he ever satisfied? Did life, outside of the
golf course, ever give him a moment's joy?
Jerry West, the freakin' logo of the league, one of the best dozen or
so men ever to put on a uniform, the premier talent evaluator and general
manager of his generation. Forty years in Forum Blue and Gold, and only
six losing seasons. Seven championships. Twenty-three seasons
with 50 or more regular season wins. Perhaps only John McGraw, or George
Halas, ever had such a sustained run of excellence with one team.
And yet, I can't remember a single time when speaking with him over
the years that he was happy with any of it. There was always a problem,
whether it was the play of his players or the coaching of his coach or the
quality of play leaguewide. Oh, could he go on about that. And he didn't
think the suits in Olympic Tower gave a damn about it.
He was one of the only living members of the 50 greatest players in NBA history
not to come to Cleveland for the celebration during All-Star weekend in
1998. "I just don't care about stuff like that," he said, and you believed
him. If you asked him what he remembered about his legendary 60-foot shot at
the end of regulation in Game 3 of the 1969 Finals with the Knicks, he said,
"we lost the game," and you believed him.
You shouldn't doubt for one second that Jerry West piled stresses upon
himself that no one asked him to bear. And that those expectations wore on
him, haunted him. Even championships gave him but brief joy.
I guess I can acknowledge this now: Jerry West was one of a handful of
people in the 15 years I've been reporting about sports for a living that
intimidated me. The list is brief: Arthur Ashe. The president of Georgetown
University. Donald Trump. Jerry West. That's all. Like anyone else in his
line of work, West could occasionally bend the truth for his purposes. But
it was hard not to believe him.
Inside him, clearly, was genius. And most genius is not interested in
the pedestrian. Genius demands perfection, or a pursuit of perfection with
which most of us mortals cannot keep up. There were times, rare times, when
he would say, sotto voce, "you know, we're pretty damned good." And you
hoped that his players appreciated what that was: a pronouncement from
Olympus.
He was a lifer, which is why it is hard to believe he won't show up
somewhere else soon, doing what he does. He had a serious flirtation with
the Clippers a couple of years ago when he felt Jerry Buss wasn't paying him
enough scratch. More than the money, though, was respect. West felt he
wasn't being given his proper due after years of accepting below market
value salary. He felt the same when Buss forced Dennis Rodman down his
gullet last season.
| |  | | O'Neal |
Respect and honor aren't just buzzwords to him. When the Magic hinted
that they believed West and the Lakers had tampered with Shaquille O'Neal
before signing him as a free agent in 1996, West almost resigned. I recall a
phone conversation with him while the Olympic team was practicing in Salt
Lake City that summer. West was prepared to quit. He hadn't slept well for
days. Now there was a bit of Hamlet in that, too -- West spent the last
several years threatening to go, only to be pulled back from the precipice.
But the angst was real.
His abilities were undebatable -- "I voted him Executive of the Year
every year he was there," said Pacers president Donnie Walsh, who may now
well wear the mantle of Best GM Around. But West sometimes gets credit for
things he didn't do. While everyone is beating Jerry Krause up this
offseason, realize that his and West's careers have striking parallels.
Krause's accomplishments in Chicago are regularly belittled because he
didn't draft Michael Jordan. That was indeed Rod Thorn's selection, in 1984,
the year before Krause became GM. But West didn't draft Magic Johnson. Or
James Worthy. And he didn't trade for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. All those players
were already on board when West became GM in 1982.
He shared Krause's philosophy about coaches -- that, while important,
coaches were just part of an organization's success, and certainly weren't
worth the increasing salaries they were receiving. And West was just as
arrogant about the Lakers as Krause was about the Bulls. West couldn't
believe when a free agent didn't want to play in Los Angeles for less than
what he could get elsewhere.
But West clearly had reason to think that way. From his perch, the
Lakers were, with the Celtics, the NBA's Gold Standard through four decades.
On his watch, the Lakers acquired Byron Scott, and A.C. Green, and Mychal
Thompson, and Sam Perkins, and Vlade Divac. It was during West's three-year
tenure as head coach that Michael Cooper came to LaLa. It was West who
gambled big, trading half his team to Vancouver and Charlotte to have enough
cap room to entice O'Neal from Orlando. And unlike Krause with Tim Duncan,
West delivered.
| |  | | Bryant |
It was West who said, on the eve of the 1996 draft, "I've just seen the
best workout by a teenager, ever." It was West who believed in Kobe Bryant
when most around the league thought Bryant would be a good, but not great,
talent. (Full disclosure alert: among those idiots was, well, me.) And he
stuck with Bryant through his first two painful postseasons. He would say,
sotto voce again, "we've got to play this kid." And when Del Harris didn't,
well, you know the rest.
Throughout this past season, he would acknowledge in scattered moments
that the Lakers were playing pretty well. Really well, even. But those
moments were brief. The last time I spoke with him was the morning of Game 6
of the Finals. His Lakers were one victory away from reclaiming what they
felt was their birthright, a world championship. I was standing outside the
Staples Center. He was at the Lakers' practice facility in El Segundo.
"Well, Jerry, I guess I'll see you tonight," I said in closing.
"Oh, I won't be there," he said.
And you believed him. | |
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