Summertime ... and the livin' is easy. But the winnin' is anything but easy for Jerry West.

The other night, the new boss of the Memphis Grizzlies watched his summer-league team lose its first game in the Los Angeles Summer Pro League. That's not exactly back-page news. It's no surprise that even in the offseason, the Grizzlies aren't very good.

	Jerry West knows he has a challenge in front of him with the Grizzlies.

"The secret to winning is talent," West said as he watched his new team go down to defeat to his old Lakers. "And we don't have enough."

He certainly doesn't have Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, or anyone else in that class. Or even in the class or two below. But West is busy trying to upgrade a roster that accounted for only 23 wins last season.

He's already traded off an unproductive Nick Anderson to Cleveland for a solid backup in Wesley Person. Plus, he added Kansas star Drew Gooden in the draft. Those two, along with Rookie of the Year Pau Gasol and Shane Battier, should make the Griz immediately better.

This summer, West is looking to add several free agents, including Troy Hudson, a spark off the bench for Doc Rivers in Orlando; Michael Doleac, a backup center in Cleveland; Seattle's Jerome James, with whom he met on Tuesday; and Keon Clark, the Raptors' frontcourt reserve who is expected to stay in Toronto.

Granted, it's not the same as luring Shaq from Orlando or taking a flier on a high-school star out of Lower Merion, Pa. This free-agent crop isn't going to help anyone that much, given that few teams want to pay a potential luxury tax, and the pool of talent is the shallowest it's been in years.

Nonetheless, these moves and the potential moves by Memphis are worth noting, because it's Jerry West who's making them.

"I'm behind," he told reporters while watching the Grizzlies play. "No question I'm behind. I didn't have the chance to focus on the (draft), and we could have done a better job bringing in summer players. We need to be able to put a representative team out there, and right now we just aren't good enough to compete."

As you can see, the famed competitive streak still remains in the man most GM's consider the best judge/evaluator of talent in the game.

Hiring West was easily the best move in the history of a franchise that has been a lottery team for all seven years of its existence.

West had a job for life with the Lakers as a consultant. But he was also looking for a challenge. As he turned 64 in May, he also talked to the Hawks about running their operations. At one point, according to a person close to West, he was ready to commit to Atlanta. But inexplicably, Ted Turner never came up with his asking price, reportedly $5 million per season.

Although West was also linked to Golden State, the Warriors never once approached him about their top executive post. However, a group seeking to buy the Warriors did contact him and ask if he'd be interested in running the team once they had purchased it. West never had to make that decision because Warriors owner Chris Cohan turned the group down.

So he took the biggest challenge possible, heading a team with an all-time record of 124-418. To his new front-office staff, the message has been the same since he took over: We need more talent.

West still can't believe a major piece of talent was traded off. When the Kings were giving West's old team all it could handle in the Western Conference finals, he approached members of his new basketball staff and asked, "Was there something wrong Mike Bibby did when he was here?"

	“	We can't put a team out there that wins 23 games. It's not acceptable to me and nor should it be for the fans. But we need to have better players if we're going to compete at a high level. ”
		— Jerry West

West, like everyone else, couldn't believe that the Griz traded off Bibby for Jason Williams. But there's nothing he can do about that now, except hope that Williams becomes a more productive player.

"We can't put a team out there that wins 23 games," West said. "It's not acceptable to me and nor should it be for the fans. But we need to have better players if we're going to compete at a high level."

In Los Angeles, West usually had the best players. From Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson and James Worthy, to Shaq and Kobe, he was able to build six championship teams during his days as the Lakers' top basketball executive.

The question is, can he ever get those kinds of players to come to Memphis? The first part of the answer is, that depends, as in, that depends on what Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley allows West to do.

"Going from Jerry Buss to Michael Heisley, Jerry West is going to get a real wakeup call," said a league official who has had numerous dealings with both owners.

For the most part, Buss left West alone. But Heisley is known as a micro-manager who regularly bullies his basketball people. Even someone as respected as Chuck Daly, now a Grizzlies consultant, has been run over by the owner.

"Nothing gets done without Heisley's OK or the specter of his wrath," said the official. "People are scared to do things because of what he'll do. He's done a lot of charitable things. But he's also crushed a million people on his way to the top. The only way this can work is if Heisley lets Jerry West be Jerry West."

There are other issues, too. Namely, can small-market Memphis afford the kind of big-money deals it takes to land free agents? Considering that the Grizzlies are already over the $43-million salary cap -- their projected salaries add up to around $53 million for this coming season -- the answer appears to be, yes. When West was winning titles with the Lakers, his salaries usually were in the same area.

And, apparently, Heisley is going to continue to pay the freight, making the funds available to get a significant free agent in the future. A strong indication of that is that West has assured several agents in the last few days that the Griz will pay the luxury tax.

But will a major free agent -- a Tim Duncan or a Jason Kidd -- be willing to play in Memphis? That remains to be seen, starting next July, when the best collection of talent goes on the open market since the famed Class of 1996.

Until then, West has a lot of work to do. But that's life in Memphis -- where, no matter what time of year it is, the winnin' ain't easy.

Mitch Lawrence, who covers the NBA for the New York Daily News, writes a regular NBA column for ESPN.com.