NBA Icon Passes Away At 86

Jerry West, the former Los Angeles Clipper whose silhouette became the inspiration for the National Basketball Association’s logo, has died at 86, according to his former team.

News of the national champion’s passing was confirmed by ESPN reporter Tim Bontemps on X. The 6’3 West leaves behind five adult children from two earlier marriages.

Known as “Mr. Clutch” for his game-saving shot in the 1970 NBA Finals, West rose from the mountains of West Virginia to help lead his home state university team to the 1959 NCAA championship game. One year later, he became the number one draft pick for the NBA’s 1960 season, signing with the Minneapolis Lakers and co-captaining the U.S. men’s national team that same year.

As a point guard, West excelled under the tensest of times. He still holds the NBA record for the highest points per game average in a playoff series with 46.3, earned 14 showings to the league’s All-Star team, and was voted league MVP in 1972. He was named as one of basketball’s 50 greatest players of all time in 1996. After retiring from play in 1974, West stayed with the Lakers as they relocated to Los Angeles, coaching his former team through three seasons and playoff appearances in each. By the 1982 season he was appointed general manager and oversaw the team’s historic six-championship reign atop the NBA; 20 years later, he returned to coach the Memphis Grizzlies to their first-ever playoff berth and twice earned the league’s Executive of the Year award.

He was recognized by former President Donald Trump, who awarded West the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2019, the highest civilian honor.

Born in 1938 in Chelyan, West Virginia, West was born in the working-class household of father Howard Stewart West, a coal mine electrician, and housewife Cecil Sue West. He recalled later in life that severe physical abuse by his father led him to sleep with a shotgun under his pillow for a time out of fear that he may one day have to shoot him in self-defense. “I was afraid to come home,” West told the Dan Patrick Show in 2011. “I didn’t want to come home. I felt completely useless. I describe myself to friends of myself as a stray dog.”

West said eventually he got to the point where he had to stand up to his father. “I did get to the point where I was very defiant,” West said, adding he eventually warned him, “If you ever touch me again, I am going to kill you.”

Basketball, and especially the family he cultivated at the Lakers, proved to be West’s escape. “It was a place I could get lost,” he recalled. However, the team’s move to L.A. and subsequent leadership under coach Phil Jackson became tumultuous for West. “Toward the end, I had no relationship with Phil [Jackson],” West said. Before his departure, he developed strong bonds with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant. He mourned the loss of his friend in 2020.

“My association with him, helping him arrive here in Los Angeles, watching him grow as a player, and being like a surrogate father for him when he was 17 years old, couldn’t drive. My son Ryan used to drive him to practices. Thinking about some of the hurdles of trying to help a 17-year-old kid, help him become an NBA player, and take that enormous amount of talent he had and help put that in a framework that would help the Lakers be successful for so many years,” he said at the time.

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