How Jerry West became the NBA’s logo, and why the league never officially admitted it was him

Officially, the NBA’s logo is blank. It is an anonymous, faceless player dribbling a ball against a red and white background. That’s the NBA’s story and it’s sticking to it. Unofficially, however, the logo is well known to be the silhouette of one of the league’s first true icons: Jerry West, who died Wednesday at age 86.

In 1969, the NBA hired a brand consultant named Alan Siegel to create a logo. One year earlier, he had done so for Major League Baseball, and the images are strikingly similar. The baseball logo is also a blank player against a red and white background, but the image has no distinguishing stylistic features. The NBA’s logo, however, visibly features a player in the middle of a dribble move. In 2010, Siegel admitted the truth to the Los Angeles Times. “It’s Jerry West,” he said.

More specifically, it is the image of West taken in a photograph by Wen Roberts in 1969. “It had a nice flavor to it,” he said in 2010, “so I took that picture and we traced it. It was perfect. It was vertical and it had a sense of movement. It was just one of those things that clicked.”

The league itself, however, hasn’t been quite as forthcoming. In that same 2010 interview, Siegel offered a charitable explanation for why the league has refused to acknowledge West’s status as the logo. “They want to institutionalize it rather than individualize it,” he said. “It’s become such a ubiquitous, classic symbol and focal point of their identity and their licensing program that they don’t necessarily want to identify it with one player.” In a 2017 interview with Aaron Dodson of The Undefeated, he offered a more practical possible explanation. “Maybe they thought West would want a fee,” he said. In 2021, commissioner Adam Silver finally relented, if only slightly. “While it’s never been officially declared that the logo is Jerry West,” Silver said, “it sure looks a lot like him.”

The irony of all of this is that West would seem unlikely to seek financial gain from the logo. In fact, he even told The Jump in 2017 that he wished the league would…

Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/how-jerry-west-became-the-nbas-logo-and-why-the-league-never-officially-admitted-it-was-him/

Author : Sam Quinn

Publish date : 2024-06-12 15:58:33

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