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| Jerry West on September 6, 2019 during a ceremony at the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. |
| Photo: AFP/VNA/CVN |
He was the “embodiment of basketball excellence“, affirmed the Los Angeles Clippers club, which he joined in 2017 as a consultant, without revealing the causes of his death. NBA commissioner Adam Silver greeted him in a press release.basketball genius” And “a major figure in our league for over 60 years“.
Orange ball legend Michael Jordan regretted the loss “of a friend, a mentor, like a big brother whose friendship and knowledge I cherished“.
Current star of the Los Angeles Lakers, Jerry West’s lifelong club, LeBron James greeted a “dear friend” : “I will sincerely miss our conversations“.
Bruised by a difficult childhood, Jerry West was also bruised by an incredible series of seven failures in the NBA finals. The supreme title finally won with the Lakers, two years before the end of his career (1960-1974), did not compensate for the frustrations of the past.
“There’s a chasm in my heart that can never be filled“, said this formidable shooter, one of whose rare moments of pure happiness was the Olympic gold medal won in Rome alongside another future basketball legend, Oscar Robertson.
This guard/leader (1.91 m) had the irreplaceable talent to score in hot moments. “We’ve never seen a player so clutch+ (catchy)“, said his teammate Pat Riley, who later became a great coach.
Eight defeats in nine finals
He finished his career averaging over 27 points per game, at a time when the three-point shot did not exist. Fourteen times selected to the All-Star Game, he was also an excellent defender.
West was born in 1938 in Cabin Creek, a village in West Virginia, into a family of six children where he was beaten by his father.
In 1951, at the age of 13, he was traumatized by the death of his older brother in the Korean War. He took refuge in solitude, silence and… basketball, every day for hours.
In college, West lost with West Virginia in the NCAA final to California, the first in a long series of disappointments.
Recruited in 1960 by the Lakers, who had just moved from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, he formed a flamboyant duo with another great player, Elgin Baylor. But six times, his hopes were shattered by Bill Russell’s invincible Boston Celtics team. Until the end of his life, he hated going to the great city of Massachusetts.
Successful “general manager”
His personal prestige continued to rise, but collective consecration eluded him. In 1965, he set a record in a playoff series by averaging 46 points in the semifinals against Baltimore. In 1969, he was the only player in history to be elected MVP of the final series after losing it, thanks in particular to his 42 points in the fatal game 7. “It was awful, I really wanted to quit basketball, it was too painful“, he said later.
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| The NBA logo on the front of a store in Beijing (photo taken October 9, 2019). |
| Photo: AFP/VNA/CVN |
In 1969 the NBA created its current logo, a silhouette of Jerry West, inspired by a photograph of the champion dribbling during a game.
After the Celtics, the New York Knicks became its great rivals in three finals in four years in the early 1970s. In the second (his eighth in total!), with the reinforcement of superstar Wilt Chamberlain (arriving in 1968), West finally lifted the coveted trophy.
After his retirement as a player in 1974, he coached the Lakers from 1976 to 1979 then entered management and became general manager from 1982 for two decades which corresponded to the golden era of the franchise (8 titles between 1980 and 2002 ). It was he in particular who orchestrated the successful recruitments of Kobe Bryant then Shaquille O’Neal.
He then joined the Golden State Warriors as a member of the board of directors (2011-2017), with whom he won two NBA titles, then the Clippers in 2017.
In 2011, married with five children, he presented a very dark image of himself in an autobiography entitled “My charmed, tormented life”, where he described himself as a “distant, inscrutable and unpredictable person“that its”inner demons” had always prevented us from appreciating his successes.
AFP/VNA/CVN
