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(Kevork Djansezian/Associated Press)
Lakers legend Jerry West was a hard man to please.
As a player, he ranked — and still ranks — as one of the best ever to play in the NBA. That’s his silhouette you see on the NBA logo that adorns every uniform and every NBA-related piece of merchandise.
As a coach, he never had a losing season and took his team to the playoffs in each of the three years he was in command.
As a general manager, in establishing the Lakers as a dynasty, he built some of the greatest teams in Lakers history, from refining the already fluid Magic Johnson-Kareem Abdul-Jabbar “Showtime” unit to engineering the sniping Kobe Bryant-Shaquille O’Neal bunch. The Lakers went to the NBA Finals eight times and won four championships in his 18 seasons as a Lakers executive, and teams he’d built won two more titles after he’d retired.
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His statue — it looks a lot like the logo — stands in front of Crypto.com Arena, silent testimony to his Olympic gold medal, his NCAA Final Four most-outstanding-player award, his niche in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, his 14 All-Star Game appearances, his 27-point scoring average, his most-valuable-player awards in both the NBA Finals and the All-Star Game, his executive-of-the-year awards, his game-tying 63-foot shot against the New York Knicks in the 1970 Finals, his “Mr. Clutch” nickname, and more.
Impressive accomplishments, most would agree. West, who died Wednesday morning at the age of 86, thought otherwise. With him, it wasn’t so much what he’d done. The missed shots, the lost games, the almost-but-not-quite championships, these were the things that stuck with him, that turned basketball, the thing he loved most and did best, into daily torture.
Jerry West coaches the Lakers during the 1976-77 season. (Robert Lachman / Los Angeles Times)
“I have a hole in my heart, a hole that can never be filled,” he acknowledged in his 2011 autobiography, “West by West: My Charmed and Tormented Life,” written with Jonathan Coleman.
Not that there weren’t…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/jerry-west-lakers-legend-architect-135915248.html
Author : LA Times
Publish date : 2024-06-12 13:59:15
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