Jerry West made greatest trade in NBA history, and in the process, redefined roster-building for decades

The first dynasty that Jerry West was a part of was a pretty slow burn. The Los Angeles Lakers were fairly directionless after his retirement as a player in 1974. They started the turnaround by landing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1975. They spent the next several years slowly adding the surrounding pieces it would take to win a title. A Jamaal Wilkes here, a Norm Nixon there. The dynasty only really took shape in 1979, when a draft pick gained from the 1976 free agency loss of Gail Goodrich turned into Magic Johnson. Unsurprisingly, this is how dynasties tend to form. It’s an incremental process of addition most of the time.

West, who died Wednesday at age 86, didn’t officially take over as general manager of the Lakers until 1982. But he proved to be a stellar caretaker of the dynasty that had already begun. Key additions like James Worthy and Byron Scott helped West add three championships to the two credited to Bill Sharman, but when the time came for him to build his own dynasty from scratch, he decided a four-year build was a bit slow for his tastes. So, in 1996, West made the greatest trade in NBA history, and in the process, effectively built the turn of the century’s defining team in a single stroke.

It started, as so many great Hollywood basketball stories do, with a dose of Lakers exceptionalism. That’s the only real explanation for breaking up a 53-win team, which is where the 1995-96 Lakers fell. It was the best season the Lakers had posted since Johnson’s retirement, but it was also a far cry from the highs of the Johnson era. Those Lakers lost in the first round. West saw a path back to the top of the mountain. It wasn’t exactly well-worn in the mid-90s.

NBA free agency was relatively new in 1996. The league’s first unrestricted free agent, Tom Chambers, had only moved from Seattle to Phoenix eight years prior. In the years that followed, it served mostly as a path for fringe additions. The rules of the cap at the time encouraged that. The NBA had no max contracts at the time, and teams were free to go above the salary cap to…

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Author : Sam Quinn

Publish date : 2024-06-12 19:42:10

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