NBA legend Jerry West, whose prolific playing career landed him on the league’s logo and basketball savvy led to multiple championships, died on Wednesday, the Los Angeles Clippers said.
The 86-year-old had been working as an adviser to the Clippers since 2017.
“Jerry West, the personification of basketball excellence and a friend to all who knew him, passed away peacefully this morning at the age of 86,” according to the statement by the Clippers. “His wife, Karen, was by his side.”
NBA commissioner Adam Silver called West a “basketball genius” and a “defining” figure in the league.
“I valued my friendship with Jerry and the knowledge he shared with me over many years about basketball and life,” Silver said in a statement. “On behalf of the NBA, we send our deepest condolences to Jerry’s wife, Karen, his family and his many friends in the NBA community.”
Great players from across generations paid tribute to West.
“I valued his friendship and knowledge,” six-time NBA champion Michael Jordan said. “I always wished I could have played against him as a competitor, but the more I came to know him, I wish I had been his teammate. I admired his basketball insights, and he and I shared many similarities to how we approached the game.”
The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame member was an all-American at West Virginia University before playing 14 seasons for the Los Angeles Lakers.
Despite the fact West’s career came in an era with a much shorter playoff schedule, his name is still all over NBA postseason record books: 4,457 points (ninth most), 1,622 baskets made (ninth), and 1,213 free throws made (seventh) just to name a few.
In regular season play, West made 7,160 free throws, the ninth most.
He was named to the NBA’s all-time team, among the 75 greatest in 75 years of the league, in 2021.
West’s lasting multigenerational impact on the sport cannot be understated.
Modern NBA fans know him as “The Logo” with his silhouette serving as pro basketball’s most front-facing image.
Baby boomers know West as “Mr. Clutch,” the player always willing to take game-deciding shots. He famously knocked in a buzzer-beating 60-footer against the New York Knicks, sending Game 3 of the 1970 NBA Finals to overtime. West was winner of the league’s first NBA Finals MVP award, in 1969.
And even older fans might know West as “Zeke from Cabin Creek,” in a slightly geographically challenged moniker because he grew up Chelyan, West Virginia, not in neighboring Cabin Creek.
“Today is one of the saddest days ever for West Virginia University and the state of West Virginia,” WVU athletic director Wren Baker said in a statement. “We have lost the greatest Mountaineer of all time, and there will never be another Jerry West.”
Before turning pro, West played in on what generally regarded as the greatest amateur team in world basketball history, the 1960 gold medal-winning Americans.
Coach Pete Newell tabbed future Hall of Famers Walt Bellamy, Jerry Lucas, Oscar Robertson and West for a squad that won by an average of more than 42 points per contest that summer in Rome.
West continued his greatness into the pro ranks, leading the Lakers to nine appearances in the NBA finals, capturing the title once, in 1972.
He spent nearly two decades in the Lakers front office, serving as general manager and helping assemble the famed “Showtime” teams.
Magic Johnson, the centerpiece of those teams, said West meant the world to him.
“Jerry West was more than a general manager, he was a great friend and confidante,” Johnson said in a statement. “He was there in my highest moments, winning 5 NBA Championships, and in my lowest moment when I announced my HIV diagnosis and we cried together for hours in his office.”
With West in various management capacities, the Lakers captured NBA titles in 1980, 1982, 1985, 1987, 1988 and 2000.
“Jerry West is forever a basketball icon. He brought Lakers fans their first championship in Los Angeles in 1972 and was integral to another six titles during his time with us,” the club said. “Our thoughts are with the West family and the many NBA fans who honor his legacy. Jerry West will always be a Lakers legend.”
Pat Riley, head coach for five Lakers titles, said West’s passing took him back to the glorious 1980s.
“Today’s sad, sad news about his passing brought back many of those special moments with Jerry,” the Miami Heat president Riley said in a statement. “Those beautiful memories came in a waterfall of tears; all coming so fast, so vivid, so etched in my mind.”
West went on to work for the Memphis Grizzlies and Golden State Warriors. He was in Golden State’s front office when the Warriors won titles in 2015 and 2017, his seventh and eighth championship rings as an executive.
Warriors owner Joe Lacob grew up in Massachusetts as a fan of West’s archrival, the Boston Celtics, but said he was always admirer of the NBA great.
“To me, he was basketball. He was not just about the actual game, but he personified competitiveness,” Lacob said in statement on Wednesday. “He was the most competitive individual I have ever met, settling for nothing short of greatness. He had to win. It consumed him. He was bigger than life. He was an icon.”
Lacob added: “We are devastated with today’s news of his passing and extend our prayers and support to his wife, Karen, his entire family and the NBA community.”
West won Executive of the Year awards in 1995 with the Lakers and in 2004 with the Grizzlies.
He was honored with a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, by Donald Trump in 2019.
“Jerry’s four decades with the Lakers also included a successful stint as a head coach and a remarkable run in the front office that cemented his reputation as one of the greatest executives in sports history,” Silver said. “He helped build eight championship teams during his tenure in the NBA — a legacy of achievement that mirrors his on-court excellence.”
West’s impact on pro basketball can be seen every time an official league statement appears on NBA letterhead or someone slips on a piece of NBA merchandise.
The red-white-and-blue logo, designed in 1969 by branding guru Alan Siegel, remains as one of the most enduring images in North American sports.
Siegel’s friend and noted sports journalist Dick Schaap handed him a file of NBA pictures and an image of West — dribbling with his left hand and driving to the hoop — jumped out at him.
“I always admired him, but I liked the picture because it was a nice vertical and had this motion to it,” Siegel told NBA.com in 2021. “I was a fan of his and he was one of those people who had an important history in the NBA.”
At the time, Siegel didn’t reveal that West the inspiration for that famous silhouette but it was obvious to many fans.
“In designing the logo, I never mentioned it was based on a picture of him,” he said. “It was just discovered years later.”
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the NBA’s No. 2 all-time scorer who player for West in L.A., said it’s clear why his former coach is “the logo.”
“The reason Jerry West is the logo for the NBA is because he embodied the qualities we admire in our best athletes: skills as a player, dedication as a teammate, and integrity as a person,” the former Lakers center said in a statement.
“He was my coach, and my advisor, but mostly he was my friend. Today, a part of the continent has broken off and we are all left a little smaller. I know I am. I especially want to send my deepest condolences to Karen and the entire West family.”
In recent years, West had become an advocate for mental health, openly speaking about his battles with depression that traced back to childhood with an abusive father in poor, rural West Virginia.