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During his 14-year playing career with the Los Angeles Lakers, West became synonymous with brilliant basketball. He was the third player in league history to reach 25,000 points (after Wilt Chamberlain and Oscar Robertson). He was an All-Star every year of his career and led Los Angeles to the NBA Finals nine times. He left the game holding records for career postseason scoring and the highest average in a playoff series.
West's statistical record only begins to tell his story. When the chips were down, West, with his lightning-quick release, was the guy the Lakers turned to for the big basket. Many players have been tagged with the nickname "Mr. Clutch," but none of them lived up to it as well as West did. He was responsible for perhaps the most famous buzzer-beater of all time: a 60-foot swish that tied Game 3 of the 1970 NBA Finals against the New York Knicks.
West was motivated by a relentless drive to succeed. Years after a game in which he hit 16 of 17 shots from the field, sank all 12 free throw attempts, and notched 12 rebounds, 12 assists and 10 blocked shots, West told the National Sports Daily, "Defensively, from a team standpoint, I didn't feel I played very well. Very rarely was I satisfied with how I played." This obsessive quest for perfection was a constant during West's playing years, and it continued in his later roles as coach and general manager of the Lakers and, currently, as president of basketball operations for the Memphis Grizzlies.
Equally legendary was West's tolerance for pain. Not blessed with great size, strength, or dribbling ability, West made up for these deficiencies with pure hustle and an apparent lack of regard for his body. He broke his nose at least nine times. On more than one occasion West had to be helped to the court before games in which he ultimately scored 30 or 40 points.
Despite a level of intensity so high it could melt lead, West was one of the most admired and well-liked figures in professional basketball. His ferocity rarely, if ever, rubbed players, coaches or fans the wrong way. After the Lakers' heartbreaking loss to the Boston Celtics in the 1969 NBA Finals, John Havlicek walked up to West and said, "Jerry, I love you." Such comments were not uncommon.
Like many NBA stars, West came from humble beginnings. His first nickname, "Zeke from Cabin Creek," was actually based on faulty information. He grew up in Cheylan, W. Va., although his family got its mail in Cabin Creek. He was the son of a coal mine electrician who could afford no luxuries and who was usually too drained from work to play with his children. Jerry's closest brother, David, was killed in the Korean War when Jerry was only 12. The tragedy turned young Jerry inward, forcing him to develop his own coping mechanisms.
A smallish youth, West didn't make his junior high football, baseball or track teams. His only outlet was a basketball hoop nailed to a storage shed outside a neighbor's house. The dirt-covered court became his domain. In the rainy spring he dribbled in mud. When it snowed West played wearing gloves. He practiced shooting until his fingers bled. He taught himself his quick shot release by bouncing the last dribble hard off the ground. Until he got it right, the ball would frequently hit and bruise his face. After practice he would listen to West Virginia University Mountaineers basketball games on the radio.
West completely immersed himself in practice, often neglecting to eat. His mother lashed him when he showed up hours late for dinner. He became so thin that he had to receive vitamin injections. But the practice paid off. He made the varsity squad at East Bank High School, although he mostly sat on the bench during his junior year. Over the next summer he grew six more inches. As a 6-foot senior, West became the first prep player in state history to score 900 points in a season, averaging 32.2 points. With West's hot hand leading the way, East Bank won the 1956 state title.
Naturally, West enrolled at West Virginia University. With the Mountaineers he averaged 24.8 ppg and was twice named an All-America. The team reached the NCAA Championship Game in 1959 but lost to the University of California. In five postseason games that year, West scored a total of 160 points, presaging his later playoff heroics. The following year he and Oscar Robertson led an extremely talented U.S. squad to a gold medal at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.
The Minneapolis Lakers chose West with the second overall pick behind Robertson in the 1960 NBA Draft. Emboldened by the success of the westward-bound Brooklyn Dodgers and faced with the dilemma of finding a site for its home games, the Lakers franchise moved to Los Angeles for the 1960-61 season. The team had posted a 25-50 record in its last season in Minneapolis.
With Elgin Baylor ("Mr. Inside") scoring nearly 35 ppg and West ("Mr. Outside") contributing 17.6 ppg, the Lakers improved to 36-43 and finished in second place in the Western Division. They edged the Detroit Pistons in the division semifinals but then lost to the St. Louis Hawks in the division finals.
During the remaining 13 seasons of West's playing career the Lakers missed the Finals only four times. However, the Lakers and West came out on the losing end in eight of those nine Finals. Six of the losses came at the hands of the powerhouse Celtics. A few months before winning the title against the Knicks in 1972, West told Family Weekly, "It would almost be better not to get to the playoffs at all than to go so far but no further."