Jerry West lived a basketball life to the fullest: ‘The Logo’

The NFL has a shield, which is probably the way it should be, ice-cold and bedecked in red, white and blue, white stars (and white football) set against a blue field at the top. The NFL is, always has been, about the brand. No ambiguity there. The same goes for the NHL. The logo is black and gray, “NHL” and two stripes. No fuss, no muss. Like hockey players. 

For the longest time, it was assumed that the logo for Major League Baseball was based on Harmon Killebrew because, well, it sort of looks like Harmon Killebrew, but that was debunked by the very man who created it, Jerry Dior, who repeatedly explained it was designed to be strictly ambiguous; you can’t tell if it’s a right-handed or a left-handed hitter, and there’s no hint of ethnicity. It could be anyone. 

There was never any such uncertainty applied to the NBA logo, however. 

“There’s no need to make this harder than it is,” Alan Siegel told me in 1998. “It’s Jerry West.” 

Siegel had played high school basketball at Long Beach High with Larry Brown and he’d gone to college at Cornell with Dick Schaap. It was during Schaap’s tenure as editor of Sport magazine that Siegel had been approached by NBA commissioner Walter Kennedy and commissioned to update the league’s logo. Siegel sifted through an array of pictures, saw one of West that struck him perfectly. 

“We all liked the verticality,” Siegel told NBA.com in 2021. “I didn’t want to do something with people dunking. I always admired the guards and players who were so multitalented and versatile.” 

And thus, the logo. 

And thus, Jerry West became The Logo. 

And in so many ways, there couldn’t possibly have been a better choice for that honor than West, who died peacefully Wednesday at 86 after a full basketball life that included a Final Four at West Virginia, a gold medal playing for Team USA, an NBA championship playing with the Lakers, and building the foundation for 10 more Lakers champions as the team’s GM from 1977-2000. 

“Jerry West was the perfect basketball player,” Walt Frazier said in May 2020, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the 1970 Knicks/Lakers NBA Finals. “He had a textbook jump shot. He was fearless. He could play amazing defense, which I’m not sure a lot of people know. And of course he was clutch. We found that out the hard way.” 

That was the very end of Game 3 of those Finals, at the Fabulous Forum. Dave DeBusschere made a tough shot to give the Knicks a 102-100 lead with three seconds left. The Lakers were out of timeouts. West took the inbounds pass, dribbled three times, then let fly from a few paces short of the half-court line. 

“Swish,” Clyde recalled. “It wasn’t even a crazy bounce or a heave off the backboard. It was like he’d just made a free throw. It was incredible.” 

It was also something of a Cliffs Notes version of West’s playing career. So often his brilliance wasn’t enough to overcome hard luck and harder fate. 

The Lakers lost that game in OT, and lost the series in seven. A year earlier he’d been named MVP of the Finals despite the Lakers losing in seven to the Celtics, the only time a losing player has ever received that honor. In six NBA Finals against the Celtics, West’s Lakers went 0-6. In 1959, he’d scored 28 points and added 11 rebounds but his West Virginia Mountaineers lost the NCAA championship game to Cal, 71-70; once again he won Most Outstanding Player despite playing for the runner-up. 

West’s two notable exceptions to that hard-luck habit were memorable ones, though. In 1960, he played on what is generally considered the greatest-ever amateur basketball team, teaming with Oscar Robertson to steamroll eight opponents by an average of 42 points to win gold in Rome. And in 1971-72, he teamed with Wilt Chamberlain as the Lakers won 33 games in a row (a record that still stands) on the way to 69 wins and a title.

As a GM he was at least partly responsible for putting together all five Showtime Lakers champs in the ’80s, then managed to outbluff the Nets’ John Calipari and wiggle his way into picking Kobe Bryant in the 1996 draft, soon after signing Shaquille O’Neal away from the Magic. That set the stage for five more Lakers titles. 

It was a full and quite spectacular basketball life for The Logo, even if the NBA has never officially admitted that’s West, and even though West himself was to the end uncomfortable with the connection. 

“It’s flattering,” he said in 2013. “But I think there were so many players who came before me who merited that kind of honor, and many who came after. Basketball is never about one man.”