He practiced shooting until his fingers bled. He taught himself his quick shot release by bouncing the last dribble hard off the ground. Until he got it right, the ball would frequently hit and bruise his face. After practice he would listen to West Virginia basketball games on the radio. West completely immersed himself in practice, often neglecting to eat. His mother lashed him when he showed up hours late for dinner and he became so thin that he had to receive vitamin injections.
But the practice paid off. He made the varsity squad at East Bank High School, although he mostly sat on the bench during his junior year. Over the next summer he grew six more inches. As a 6-foot senior, West became the first prep player in state history to score points in a season, averaging In five postseason games that year, West scored a total of points, presaging his NBA playoff heroics.
The following year he and Oscar Robertson led an extremely talented U. Emboldened by the success of the westward-bound Brooklyn Dodgers and faced with the dilemma of finding a site for its home games, the Lakers franchise moved to Los Angeles for the season. The team had posted a record in its last season in Minneapolis. Jerry West always came through, as this clip from the All-Star Game proves. They edged the Detroit Pistons in the division semifinals but then lost to the St.
Louis Hawks in the division finals. During has remaining 13 seasons, the Lakers missed the Finals only four times. However, the Lakers and West came out on the losing end in eight of those nine Finals.
Six of the losses came at the hands of the powerhouse Celtics. No one was affected more by those defeats than West. A loss just ripped his guts out. West held himself to seemingly impossible standards. Unrealistic or not, West the perfectionist propelled the Lakers to The Finals repeatedly in the s and early s. In , West established himself as a deadly scoring threat and averaged In Game 7, a foot Frank Selvy jumper at the buzzer that would have won the game in regulation bounced off the rim.
In Jerry West's new autobiography, West by West , the former Los Angeles Lakers great and general manager goes into candid detail about his life around basketball. And perhaps the most interesting reference in the book was West's description of his relationship with former Lakers head coach Phil Jackson. West, who was general manager of the Lakers from , is largely credited for building the Lakers' dynasty in the s and laying the foundation for the team's three-peat from And let's just say the fact that West's last season with the Lakers was Jackson's first was not a coincidence.
This applies to the NBA, too. It would be naive to think that any of the teams involved would shy away from running a negative campaign against their competitors. Even Jerry West himself once trashed the very same organization he now works for when Bryant considered leaving for the Clippers as a free agent in the mids, and for good reason.
If Leonard had chosen the Lakers, like many among the Lakers thought he would something West alluded to in the voicemail , he would have formed a league-wrecking superstar trio with LeBron James and Anthony Davis while the Clippers would once again be overshadowed in mediocrity. Summer feels like a lot longer than 18 months ago, given all that has happened in the world and in the NBA since then. So here is a quick recap:. So yeah, as much as it may sting, you can kind of see where Jerry West is coming from in the midst of all this.
Of course, it all worked out in the end. They finished with the best regular season record in the Western Conference and cruised through the playoffs before defeating the Miami Heat in six games to win the NBA Title.
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