Ball is life, Jerry West its logo

Ball is life. This is what they say on playgrounds across America. Perhaps more than any other team sport, basketball does have a way of drawing its legends back to the game long after their playing days are done — if they ever left at all. Their omnipresence has always tied its future to its present.

Nobody embodied this more than Jerry West, the Hall of Fame player turned executive. The lifer. His death on Wednesday widens a void no sport can halt. Where once Tommy Heinsohn was still calling Boston Celtics games, Bill Russell was still presenting the NBA Finals MVP award named in his honor and West was still consulting for another contender, there are now the immeasurable shadows they cast.

For so long, generations of fans could bounce their youngest on a knee, point to the front row and say, “There goes a legend.” It would serve as a conversation starter about how West was a West Virginia high school phenom, a Mountaineers great and an Olympic gold medalist before he ever played in the NBA.

And, man, what an NBA career it was. He was an All-Star each year of his 14-year career, including 10 All-NBA first-team selections. He was the origin of the league’s ring culture, losing seven NBA Finals — six to Russell’s Celtics — before breaking through at age 33 alongside Wilt Chamberlain on the 1972 Los Angeles Lakers. He is the only player ever to capture Finals MVP honors on a losing team. He even finished second to Chamberlain, Willis Reed and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in four separate regular-season MVP races.

But West takes a backseat to no basketball lifer. He was a jump-shooting guard the likes of which the NBA had never seen. Barely anyone before him even knew someone 6-foot-3 could post 27 points, seven assists and six rebounds in a game, let alone average as many for a career. He was Mr. Outside and Mr. Clutch. If you want to know why, watch his 60-footer to send Game 3 of the 1970 NBA Finals to overtime.

He is the NBA’s logo, for goodness’ sake, and that’s not even the half of it.

“Jerry would kick ass in a way that was so skilled and relentless,” Pat Riley, who credited West for his illustrious career as…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/ball-is-life-jerry-west-its-logo-205037492.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-06-12 20:50:37

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