Jerry West still is a reluctant sports hero
BILL DWYRE
Former Lakers great has never been comfortable with the recognition that came from his success.
Describing Jerry West is a little like analyzing molecules. Always has been.
He is a contradiction to contradictions, a right turn on a racing oval. Over the years, fittingly so, he spent most of his time with basketball players. It might have worked better had it been Sigmund Freud.
Make no mistake. West is popular and likable. He is well-spoken, well-read, incredibly proficient in most walks of life. He is 70 years old, still tall and slim and athletic, still able to beat his age in golf occasionally, still revered by the public in general and Lakers fans in particular.
Jerry West: A column on former Lakers great Jerry West in Tuesday's Sports section said West won an NBA most-valuable-player award. West never won that award. The column also said West was general manager of the Lakers for 10 years when, in fact, he held that position for 20 years -- from 1982 to 2002.
He is "the Logo," one of three nicknames that have attached themselves to him over the years, this one because the NBA chose a silhouette of him in a left-hand dribble to brand its image.
He is also "Mr. Clutch," the label put on him by the late Lakers broadcaster Chick Hearn. That spoke to West's abilities to make the shot that won the game at the end, as well as to his 14 seasons, 25,192 points and 14 NBA All-Star game selections, as well as a league most valuable player award.
"Los Angeles has been blessed to have so many star basketball players," West said.
If there were any much better than West, it's hard to name which one.
Still, the crown does not rest easily.
West can best be described as one of the most conflicted legendary sports heroes of our time. He is a man who has had a lifetime of success in nearly all facets and has never been comfortable with that.
Part of that might hark back to the third nickname, the one he likes the least: "Zeke from Cabin Creek." That was placed on him by other players from bigger cities when he arrived in the NBA in 1960, the second pick of the draft and perhaps a comparative hick. He had been an All-American at West Virginia, and nobody questioned his basketball credentials. Nobody but him, that is.
"I didn't think I was good enough to play in the pros," he said back then.
As the second-youngest of six children growing up in the relative poverty of Cheylan, W.Va., and learning his basketball craft mostly alone on muddy outdoor courts with cheap hoops, West couldn't have been less prepared for something like Los Angeles.
"Cabin Creek was about a mile away," he said, elaborating with a snapshot of life in the '50s in a coal mining state. "That's where we got our mail. I'd run there and back. Maybe that's why I was in such good shape to play basketball. I remember running past Wade's Pool Hall on a Saturday morning. You could tell how wild a time the coal miners had had the night before by how many of the windows were broken out."
