Basketball icon, Hall of Fame legend Jerry West passes away at 86

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The day everyone in West Virginia has always dreaded has finally arrived. Jerry West, the greatest athlete in West Virginia state sports history, died peacefully in his Los Angeles home, the Los Angeles Clippers announced earlier today.

No person or athlete is more identified with the Mountain State than Jerry West, whose name was on the front and the back of his Mountaineer basketball uniform.

As Pittsburgh Press sportswriter Roy McHugh once famously wrote, “the Jerry Wests of this world do not come in pairs.”

LEGEND: Looking back at Jerry West’s historic WVU career

“Today is one of the saddest days ever for West Virginia University and the state of West Virginia. Mountaineer hearts all over the world are broken with the passing of the great Jerry West,” West Virginia University Vice President and Director of Athletics Wren Baker said.

“A true gentlemen, one of the greatest players and executives the NBA has ever seen and certainly the most famous West Virginia Mountaineer of all time, he will be remembered forever by the sports world, and this University and its fans owe him a great debt of gratitude for a lifetime of achievement, generosity and loving memories,” Baker added.

West was living proof to all West Virginians that greatness was achievable, even if it was in Cheylan, which Los Angeles Times sportswriter Jim Murray jokingly called a “suburb” of Cabin Creek.

There have been great players and great sports executives, but never has there been a combination quite like Jerry West. In fact, the silhouette of West is considered to be the basis of the NBA logo, which prompted many to refer to him simply as “The Logo.”

Like most kids growing up in West Virginia in the early 1940s, things didn’t come easy for West. The son of a coal mine electrician, he saw first-hand what living in Appalachia was like toward the end of the Great Depression. He found solace in shooting baskets at a neighbor’s house and developed his deadeye accuracy after he got tired of chasing the ball down the hill after misses.

His solution? 

Don’t miss, and he rarely ever did.

West practiced so incessantly that he had to take vitamin injections for added nutrition. The solitude of the dirt basketball court he played on later provided West with the emotional shelter he needed after learning at age 12 that his beloved older brother, David, was killed in the Korean War.

Decades later, during the taping of the ESPN Sports Century Series that aired in 2000, West had great difficulty talking about his older brother’s unfortunate fate.

Although West was developing into a dominant basketball player, his body hadn’t quite caught up yet to his enormous skills. It wasn’t until the summer prior to his senior year in high school in 1955, after growing six inches, that he began to mature physically. He led the state in scoring with more than 900 points during his senior season to lead East Bank High to the 1956 state title.

By then, more than 60 different schools had offered West a scholarship, but the persistence of West Virginia coach Fred Schaus won out. West had become familiar with Schaus while listening to Jack Fleming’s radio broadcast of Mountaineer basketball games in the late 1940s, sometimes pulling the covers over his head with the radio tucked under his arm to fool his mother into thinking he was asleep.

West Virginia already had an established player in Charleston’s Hot Rod Hundley, but unlike Hundley, West had a seriousness and drive that Hundley lacked. With Hundley, the Mountaineers never had trouble getting through the Southern Conference, but when it came time to play in the NCAA tournament, the Mountaineers were always eliminated early.

That proved to be the case in 1958 during West’s sophomore season when he led the Mountaineers to a 26-1 regular season record that included back-to-back victories over fifth-ranked Kentucky and top-ranked North Carolina in the Kentucky Invitational.

Just six games into his sophomore season, Jerry sank a shot with 12 seconds remaining to send the Richmond game into overtime. He scored seven of the team’s nine points in the extra session to win the game, demonstrating his ability to perform in the clutch.

Following the KIT, West Virginia jumped from No. 8 to No.1 in the national polls — the highest-ever jump to No. 1 in AP poll history — and remained at the top of the rankings until mid-February when it slipped to No. 2 amid Southern Conference play.

Victories over Davidson, Richmond and William & Mary in the Southern Conference tournament got West Virginia back to No. 1 and the Mountaineers were the top seed in the NCAA tournament facing Manhattan in its home city, Madison Square Garden.

Manhattan pulled off one of the biggest upsets in NCAA tournament history, partly because of 32 fouls being called on West Virginia, which saw its star players West, Lloyd Sharrar, Willie Akers and Joedy Gardner foul out.

Despite his team losing Sharrar, a 6-foot-10 center, to graduation, West was determined to redeem himself the following season in 1959.

The Mountaineers returned to the NCAA tournament and advanced all the way to the finals where they were clipped 71-70 by California in the national championship game. The ball was in West’s hands when time expired, but he was unable to get off a shot. He still won the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player Award though after tying the NCAA five-game tournament scoring record with 160 points.

TOURNAMENT RUN: How WVU advanced to the 1959 championship game

WVU returned to the NCAA tournament during West’s senior season in 1960 before falling to NYU in overtime at the Charlotte Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina. In three years with him in the lineup, West Virginia posted records of 26-2, 29-5 and 26-5.

He finished his college career with 2,309 points, 1,240 rebounds and averages of 24.8 points and 13.3 rebounds per game. He was a two-time consensus All-America and ranked with Cincinnati’s Oscar Robertson as the college game’s two greatest players of that era.

The two later teamed up to play for the United States team in the 1960 Summer Olympic Games in Rome and led the U.S. team to a gold medal.

The Lakers took West second in the NBA draft, one spot behind Cincinnati, which took Robertson, and the Lakers moved from Minneapolis to Los Angeles prior to the 1961 season. Joining West in Los Angeles was Schaus, his college coach.

West did not crack the Lakers’ starting lineup until midway through his rookie season but ended up averaging 17.6 points per game. In ensuing years, West teamed with all-star forward Elgin Baylor to lead the Lakers to the NBA Finals in all but four of West’s 14 professional seasons there.

Six times the Lakers lost to the Celtics in the Finals, prompting ESPN’s Bob Carter to write, “year after year, the Boston Celtics won the championship trophy and Jerry West took home the consolation prize: praise for the runner-up.”

In the seventh game of the 1969 finals, West scored 42 points, pulled down 13 rebounds and handed out 12 assists while playing with a painful groin injury. He became the only player in league history to be MVP of the Finals as a member of the losing team. Celtics center Bill Russell said of West’s performance, “Los Angeles has not won the championship, but Jerry West is a champion.”

At one time, West’s 29.1 points-per-game average in the postseason was second only to Michael Jordan’s 33.4 average and is now fifth in NBA history.

West was the NBA’s scoring champion in 1969-70, averaging 31.2 points per game, and he was a first team NBA All-Star 12 times and made the all-defensive team four times. He was a 14-time performer in the NBA All-Star game was named MVP in 1972, the same year he won his only NBA title.

West took on a different role that year with center Wilt Chamberlain on the team, becoming more of a playmaker and facilitator. He averaged 25.8 points per game and led the league with an average of 9.7 assists per game in helping LA to a record 33-game winning streak.

The Lakers finished the regular season with a 69-13 record, the NBA’s best until the Chicago Bulls eclipsed it with a 72-10 mark in 1996. West was the third player in NBA history to surpass 25,000 career points, following Chamberlain and Robertson.

His final two seasons in Los Angeles saw him average better than 20 points per game, but at age 35, with injuries beginning to take their toll, he stepped away from the game when most believed he had more to offer.

By most standards, his 1974 season scoring average of 20.3 points per game was a good reason to continue, but not to West.

“I’m not willing to sacrifice my standards,” West said at the time of his retirement. “Perhaps I expect too much.”

West soon immersed himself into golf, and much like basketball, it was a sport he could master by himself. He perfected his game to the point where he once shot a round of 62 at Bel-Air Country Club. But golf did not provide him the same competitive fire basketball did, and West returned to the game as Lakers coach from 1976-79, leading them to a 145-101 record and a spot in the playoffs each season.

“He took a loss harder than any player I’ve ever known,” longtime Los Angeles Lakers announcer Chick Hearn once said. “He would just sit by himself and stare into space.”

West realized his role as a head coach wasn’t working and was even more uncomfortable with the advisory role he accepted for three seasons with the Lakers from 1980-82. It was only when he became the Lakers’ general manager that he again flourished.

His astute decisions and acquisitions helped turn the Lakers into the NBA’s premier team in the 1980s, ushering in the “Showtime era” that won five NBA championships in the decade. And once the Lakers began to grow old and stale in the early 1990s, he shook up the organization, first by trading established center Vlade Divac for the rights to draft high school sensation Kobe Bryant, and then freeing up enough salary cap space to sign All-Star center Shaquille O’Neal. Those bold moves led to three more NBA titles and universal acclaim for West as one of professional sports most outstanding executives.

Twice named NBA Executive of the Year, West helped the Lakers to five NBA titles before leaving to oversee the Memphis Grizzlies for five years before retiring in 2007. He joined the Golden State Warriors in 2011 as an executive board member and left the Warriors after the second of their four NBA titles in 2017.

He concluded his NBA career in an advisory capacity with the Clippers.

West will be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in October for the third time as a contributor, making him the first person to be enshrined as a player and a contributor. He was also recognized by the hall of fame in 2010 as an Olympian.

He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2019.

West was selected as part of the NBA’s 75^th Anniversary Team in 2021 and was considered basketball royalty wherever he went.

He was an inaugural member of the West Virginia University Sports Hall of Fame in 1991 and his jersey No. 44 was officially retired prior to the LSU game on Nov. 26, 2005. A statue of his likeness was dedicated outside of the WVU Coliseum on Feb. 14, 2007.

Nearly 65 years after he last played, West still owns 17 school records. 

“We have lost the greatest Mountaineer of all time, and there will never be another Jerry West. Our loving prayers go out to the West family. Rest in peace Logo — a champion and a Mountaineer forever,” Baker said.

Beyond his contributions on the basketball court, West was always a great supporter of West Virginia University and never turned down an opportunity to help his alma mater. His expertise was always consulted on basketball hiring decisions and his advice and counsel were frequently sought on important matters regarding the athletics department and the University.

He also discreetly donated millions to WVU through the years without much fanfare, per his wishes.

The Clippers said West’s wife, Karen, was by his side when he died.

“As the basketball world mourns the man known simply as “the logo,” I join all West Virginians and members of the West Virginia University family in remembering a true legend,” West Virginia University president Gordon Gee said this morning. “There will never be another Jerry West.

“From his time as a record-breaking basketball player in the WVU Field House to his success in the front offices of some of the most respected sports franchises in America, Jerry brought his unique abilities, innovative spirit and quiet strength — the very best of what it means to be a Mountaineer,” Gee said. “He was a dear friend and steadfast supporter of West Virginia University, and I send my sincerest condolences to his wife, Karen, and the entire West family.”

Son Jonnie, one of West’s five children, played for John Beilein at WVU and is currently director of player personnel for the Golden State Warriors. Jonnie married former professional golfer Michelle Wie in 2019 and the couple have one daughter, Makenna.

West was 86.