Mr. Clutch

Jerry West is a winner in every sense of the word. Not only is his silhoulette the official NBA

logo, but he also carries himself with grace and dignity—a mark of his distinguished career both on and off the basketball court. Only once in NBA Finals history has a player from the losing team been named MVP and that was West in 1969 after his Los Angeles Lakers lost a tough seven-game series to the Boston Celtics. West would go on to lead the Lakers to the title in 1971-72—a season in which the Lakers won 69 games, including 33 straight (still the NBA record). In addition to “The Logo” he has been nicknamed “Zeke from Cabin Creek” for the water near his birthplace in West Virginia; “Mr. Clutch” for his ability to hit big baskets at key moments, such as his 60-footer to tie Game 3 of the 1970 Finals against the New York Knicks; and “Mr. Outside” in reference to his accurate perimeter shot in an era with no three-point line. West is no stranger to Pacific Palisades. He served as Executive Director of the Northern Trust Open (now the Genesis Invitational) at Riviera Country Club—a course he has played many times (his best round was a 67)—and he bought a house on Capri Drive in 1973 near LA Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully. West played at West Virginia University and led the Mountaineers to the NCAA Finals in 1959. He co-captained the 1960 USA Olympic gold medal team and holds the NBA mark for most points averaged in a playoff series (46.3). The 14-time NBA All-Star retired in 1974 and has enjoyed success in the front offfice too. The 82-year-old has twice been named Executive of the Year. In this recent interview for “Sports Stories with Denny Lennon” he discussed candidly many aspects of his amazing life and career:  

DL: In your autobiography “West by West” you wrote one regret was not running for governor. Do you still feel that way?

JW: The [political] climate is always difficult. This world is never the same. People will go along when everything seems to be running smoothly and all of a sudden something comes up here in this country or some other place in the world, which changes the dynamics of people who are supposed to be thinking on a higher level. I’m a huge reader and I particularly like to read to learn. To me, history is something I can never get tired of reading about and at that point in my life I was aimless because I’d finished playing basketball and that was the thing that always drove me to try to satisfy my own competitive drive. I love West Virginia and it’s a state that needs help. It used to be a place where people could get a job working for the coal mines and if you had manual labor you could earn a good living and families replicated that. My best interest was for the people of West Virginia. It was intriguing but I was too competitive to have a broad interest for everyone.               

DL: When you shot baskets on your own did you play an imaginary game in your mind? 

JW: Basketball was a refuge for me, away from a childhood I wouldn’t prescribe for anyone. Home was a place where I felt like a piece of furniture. There was no affection in my family. When you feel like you’re a displaced person  and find things in life that can give you a respite from this ugly part of your life, that was it. There was no other reason except to watch the ball go through the hoop. If you can see yourself making improvement, you’re going to start playing mental games and I certainly  played a lot of them after I got older and I was able to make          shots on a more consistent basis. I was so little when I first started. You can be anyone you want to be. There were no basketball players I even knew about—none—it’s just something I picked up. There’s an old adage if you throw a ball to a dog he’s going to chase it… well, I was that dog! I’m still chasing that basketball, but yes it was a kind of respite for me for what I felt like going home. I didn’t feel very good about going.

DL: Were there high school basketball players you looked up to growing up?

JW: Not really. I was pretty focused on myself, how I could be a better person, how I could feel better about myself. When you feel like you’re not worth very much  in your life it’s probably the worst  thing tht can happen to anyone, in particular a child. It’s almost a sense of abandonment and when you feel that way you carry that with you everywhere you go.  Only when you do something other people thing is attractive do you start to question why do they think I’m attractive… because I’m a nice kid or a good kid? Or because I’ve got something to offer?  When I got to high school and my career took off, all of these people wanted to

recruit me and it wasn’t because I was a good kid. It wasn’t.  It was because everyone thought I had a different kind of talent and the promises made, money, financial inducements where I’d make three times what my father made in a month. It was hard for me to comprehend and at that time I didn’t say a word to anyone. “Yes sir” or ”No sir.” That’s it. I didn’t talk to anyone, except maybe a friend. I was deathly quiet. A lot of scar tissue along the way, a loss of a brother who was very important to me… that changed my life forever. It made you really wonder what’s important, is it you or your skill? Obviously it was my skill that people were excited about and I often wonder if I’d have gone to school and just been an average player or a bench player how my life would’ve turned out.  Well, it didn’t happen that way and fortunately for me it changed my life forever and about  how I can contribute back to society and particularly as you get older. I think I have a mission today to try to help people and give as much as I can give whether it’s me personally or if I have enough money to give to some cause that makes me feel good, I’m going to do it  but it’s going to be anonymously. It’s not going to be me putting my name out there for personal applause. I don’t do things like that.               

DL: Did you get a sense of family or brotherhood on teams in high school?

JW: To go back in time… we didn’t have a car. Never went on vacation. I went to a consolidated high school where kids went from 28 miles around to go there. How in the world can you communicate with anyone if you don’t have a telephone or a car? It makes you so isolated. There’s also a reticence to revert back to who you were but there was one guy and I’ll never forget his name, he’s still alive and we talk every once in awhile. Well, he had a car and he was like my chauffeur. He drove me everywhere but you remember 28 miles here, 28 miles there, everyone was spread out in these small little mining communities and a big day for me was to go to Charleston, West Virginia and he would pick me up and take me places. I’ll never forget the kindness he extended to me where otherwise I’d be doing one of two things, either fishing or hunting. So obviously basketball was becoming a more important element   in my life. There are certain things you remember about not being able to go places. You feel so isolated, very much like we do today because of this virus. It’s not natural to do that. It’s not. So it makes you a different kind of person.

DL: You got recognized by American Legion and got to go to Boys State. What was it like?

JW: It’s more than identified, it’s really about a lot of different things… your schoolwork and your status at the school. I always  used to laugh when I got this thing about Boys State, like ‘What the heck is this?’ And if I would go there I probably wouldn’t say 10 words. That’s how quiet I was. Something did occur there at Boys State. Probably the biggest disappointment I ever had as a basketball player was when I was a junior in high school. They had  an All-Conference team where I was the only unanimous choice  on the whole team and I had worked so hard to achieve something that was pretty easy for me because I’d always been competitive and I was anxiously awaiting to see what the All-State team would bring. I received an Honorable Mention, not even Second Team            or Third Team and two of the kids on this All-Conference team made the All-State team. It was probably the most devastated I’ve ever felt in my life when it pertained to my basketball career. During that period of time I decided to go and there were two kids who had made the All-State team and suddenly a basketball appears and they were choosing sides and I was like the last one selected, okay? Then, by the end of the week, I was selecting the players. That’s probably the most confident I’ve ever felt in my life, where I knew I was better than these guys. I would never say that to anyone but I knew I was better and I couldn’t wait until my senior year got there and it turned out to be justified that I made All-State since I led the state in scoring and rebounding and we won the state championship. I didn’t realize the scope of it when it happened, I fouled out of the championship game when we were way ahead, I didn’t even play the last quarter and I’d scored 39 points in the first three quarters. I was waiting for the clock to go down so we wouldn’t lose and we won. I went to East Bank High School and after we won the state championship they named the town ‘West Bank’ one day a year. That no longer occurs by the way. It was just a quirk and it was very embarassing at the time. I didn’t even know how to deal with it… people coming up to you and it was really probably the first time where I felt like maybe I am a little special, but when you  go home after that, you know you’re not special.

DL: We all know you as No. 44 but I saw pictures of you as No. 12 and No. 42 at East Bank. Is that you going up the ranks?

JW: It’s really weird. I don’t even remember numbers. In the Olympic Games it’s only one through whatever… you can’t have any number. When I got to college they wanted me to wear No. 33. A player who played there in West Virignia, a legendary figure who   played there was ‘Hot Rod’  Hundley and they wanted me to wear his number. I would not do it because I was not like him in any way, shape or form, I didn’t want  to play like him, so 44 was the number I had and that became my number throughout my career.

DL: Did Ohio State or Kentucky recruit you or was West Virginia the right fit for you because of where you grew up?

JW: I had so many recruiting offers, even from Ivy League schools, but I visited only a couple places. One was Fort Wayne, Indiana to meet the coach, the first time I’d ever been in an airplane in my life and it was a single engine plane. Then I went to visit the University of Maryland and I only did it because one of the guys who was my lifelong friend and still is today, Willie Akers, wanted to go for some reason. They had a bunch of really big guys and back then it wasn’t like staying at The Four Seasons or any of these upper crust hotels. We stayed in the arena where they played the game. And at 2 o’ clock in the morning magically a a basketball appeared. The first day we were there all they did was pay attention to these other guys. Here’s  this quiet kid from West Virignia. After that, the next day, I don’t think they talked to any of those other guys. They were talking totally to me, ‘Oh you gotta go here or you gotta go there.’ Obviously someone had been watching. I had a lot of offers, but I didn’t want to go anywhere other than West Virginia University. I just felt it was home and it’s where I belonged.   

DL: I found the story of Ann Dinardi heartwarming because we all need people to guide us at some point in our life. Can you talk about her?   

JW: She was huge. She was my secondary mother. She called me every name. Little Italian lady  and her sister looked identical to her. They lived together, they never got married and they cared for me like I was their own. And I’ve never been called so many horrible names in my life by Ann, in particular, so when I went there she probably saved me from leaving school. I didn’t want to be there. I was homesick for a town of nothing, I didn’t feel like I belonged. I had no ability to communicate with people, I had no social skills, I was so shy that if I’d go into a class I was even shy about going into class. A lot of people would say ‘Oh, that’s not true, it’s not true.’ Well, that was me, but she convinced me that I should stay. There was one other incident while I was there that the coach then called me into his office one day. He had an undefeated team when I was a junior (you couldn’t play as a freshman, but we had an undefeated freshman team too) and he called me in and probably the lowest feeling of my life was after this conversation. He said to me ‘We’re going to make a change in the starting lineup.’ I looked at him and asked ‘Why?’ He said ‘Well, we need more rebounding.’ So I said ‘I’m the leading rebounder on the team.’ We had a 6-10, 6-11 guy who was an All-American candidate and I had more rebounds than him. He said ‘And we need more scoring.’ And I said ‘Well, I’m also the leading scorer.’ Then he started talking about defensive play and that was my skill that was there from the time I was a freshman throughout my whole career. Most people just talked about the scoring part, but  defense was key for me. I said “Fred, I guard everyone’s best scorer regardless of what size they are.’ So I left there and I went back  to this little place, 65 Beechhurst Avenue which is now Jerry West Boulevard in Morgantown, West Virginia  and there were always athletes—particularly basketball players—who stayed there. It was like four little bedrooms and I told  Ann ‘I’m going to quit school. I’m going home.’ We had a long talk and it was one of those talks that only someone like her could have with me because I was so hurt that he didn’t know who I was. When I left that meeting I said ‘I can’t play for this man ever again. I can’t do it.’ Well, someway, somehow I went back  and we had the No. 1 team in the country that year. I learned a huge lesson that day about believing in yourself when no one else believes in you.  I didn’t believe he believed in me  and he was the one who was begging me to come to school there . I said to myself ‘This doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel right.’ But I stayed and endure a lot and never missed a game in college. A lot of huge disappointments very much in my professional career but that was a telling moment for Ann Dinardi in my life. She loved me to death and I always felt like I knew what love was when she was around when I didn’t know what love was before.         

DL: What impact did your high school coach Roy Williams make on you?

JW: He was my high school coach and he was also the football coach and he stressed defense, he really did. That probably had something to do with him coaching football. I think everyone who coaches football teams wants a foundation where they don’t have to outscore everyone all the time. In basketball, people see these marvelous players make shot after shot after shot. Well, they don’t do that every night. You need a foundation to keep you in games when maybe you’re not shooting well for three quarters and all of a sudden in the last quarter you’re still close, you get it going and you win the game. You can’t outscore teams every night, you have to beat them other ways. The key to it is to be an offensive team, a defensive team, a physical team… there are four or five elements that can keep you competitive if you have the right kind of players. If you don’t, you’re going to lose those games because people lose confidence very fast, particularly when they don’t win a lot. Winning breeds confidence.

DL: Was the Final Four in 1959 the first time you ever met Pete Newell?

JW: I really didn’t even meet him then. I didn’t meet him until we had tryouts for the Olympic Games in 1960. He came to be someone I admired most as a coach and as a human being. This was an incredible, wonderful man.  He was never deceptive, never told you anything you wanted to hear. He was honest and trust me, that’s rare, in particular in the NBA. So many people are deceptive. I understand why it happens   but it’s not fun when you’re dealing with someone who’s not very sure of himself at all. He’s someone I came to love and admire during the years I knew him.     

DL: Do you remember the tryout procedure for the Pan Am Games in Chicago?

JW: No, that was a selected team. Now, the Olympics were a different story. The amateurs had always won this tournament. People would say ‘How can these amateurs beat the best college players?’ Well, you see, the reason is that most of these amateurs worked for these big companies.

They were All-American players but they went to school not to play professional basketball. At that point in time you made no money playing professional basketball. So these guys ended up having a career and the only time an amateur team had ever won that tournament was in 1960. We won every game handily and whoever won they had to select seven people off that team. That’s the way the Olympics worked back then. It wasn’t like just getting invited and you knew ahead of time they were going to select 13 or 14 pros and one amateur who shouldn’t be on the team in the first place.      

DL: Why do you still consider winning the gold medal at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome your proudest achievement?

JW: It was the proudest moment for me and the reason is that there was so much going on in the world… the Cold War, racism, the threat of nuclear war. This was a bunch of people from all walks of life who happened to get together and had one of the greatest teams ever at that point in time. To walk through all these people who were professionals was a pretty amazing experience. I’ll never forget the  speech that Pete Newell gave before the last game. Everything is cumulative poiints and we were going to play the Brazilian team. Everyone thought it was going to be USA vs. Russia. That didn’t work, we beat Russia in probably the best game I played. At that point in time you just hated them and frankly I probably hated every player I played against. I liked these people away from the game, talking about the NBA, but on the court I didn’t like them. It was my self motivation. Anyway, in Pete’s very stirring pregame talk for Brazil he said ‘Guys, we can’t lose this game by 71 points, okay?’ And I think we ended up winning by 55 or something like that. This was truly a great team. We didn’t play half the game. I’ll bet I didn’t play more than 22 or 24 minutes. I played a little bit more against the Russians but most of our exceptional players, and there were three or four, hardly ever played a lot. We all played just a little.           

DL: Did you get a chance to see some of the other sports and athletes while you were there? 

JW: I saw them all. Muhammad Ali was there. He was this character you could hear walking around the Olympic Village. It was like dogs traveling with their master and he was throwing them dog bones and stuff. He was amazing for a young kid. Obviously his career speaks for itself, but I saw all the Americans. At that point in time you didn’t have  information about sports all over the world but to see some of these names that were announced was just amazing. I’ll never forget John Thomas was our high jumper and all you heard was that the Russians had three guys who could jump over seven feet. Three guys. Well, he game in third. I was stunned that the sprinter from Germany won and everyone said he cheated and started to race too soon, but they proved that his fast twitch muscles were as fast or faster than anyone in the world and he won the 100-meter dash. I do remember another funny story. We didn’t get one of those new jets. We got one of those four engine Stratoliners and I was sitting in the back of the plane. Now I weighed 172 pounds and I was right in the middle seat between two American shotputters who were each about 280 and I never slept one minute going over there.I thought they were going to crush me!                   

DL: Is the genuine concern you have for others something that started in the Olympics?

JW: No, I don’t think that was the start of it for me. Where I was raised you were taught to treat everyone the same. The most important part of it for me growing up was how you treated people, how you interacted with people. I think the greatest lessons I’ve ever learned in my life with regards to race was when I was playing. We had a number of players who were black and after games there might be eight or 10 guys in one room. I always felt a closeness to two or three guys on that team and I just loved Elgin Baylor as a person. I  absolutely loved him and admired him for a lot of different reasons. Back then everyone had to go to school for four years and there’s a difference in not the playfulness that athletes have with each other, but I love information and I love to ask questions and that was a perfect opportunity for me to ask questions about race. I got to have a better feeling and a better understanding about it. One thing most people would probably never guess with me is that I’m a huge reader and I love to read about people I think are important in this world. Most of them at this point in my life have been about our black leaders throughout the world. I just got through reading a book the other day because this has been so in the news about  the confirmation hearing of Amy Coney Barrett, who is now on the Supreme Court, well this was about Thurgood Marshall and if you read his story about trying to be selected to the Supreme Court  you realize what an extraordinary human being he was. How smart he was and for him to sit there and be grilled by people who were segregationists, being called everything except a human being, this is in 1958. People should read  about race, they should read about this country. Jewish people have never let the holocaust be forgotten. Today, there’s so much more   information available and now everyone is more in tune with how to make a difference for all people. No one should be left behind. Everyone should be embracing each other. Where has civility gone?     

DL: You are the No. 2 pick in the draft and you learn your college coach is going to be your pro coach and the franchise is relocating to Los Angeles. Was that too much for you? 

JW: I found out reading the Stars and Stripes. At that time it was about three or four pages and  you could find out what was going on. Today you can find out anything going on. I didn’t even find out I was drafted until the next day. Think about what that would’ve been: ‘Oh my God!’ Some people have asked if I was surprised I was drafted No. 2 and honestly no, I wasn’t surprised. Was I surprised Oscar Robertson went No. 1? No, I wasn’t surprised. And how are you supposed to react if you know  you’re going to get drafted there?  Was it thrilling? The most thrilling about it was when I found out we were going to be moving from Minneapolis to Los Angeles.    

DL: So were you excited to come to a city like Los Angeles? 

JW: Los Angeles back then certainly wasn’t like what it is today. I got back from Europe, went to Charleston, West Virginia, and the next morning I got on a plane,  flew to LA and checked into a this little nasty motel on Century Boulevard with all of the planes going overhead. They pick me up four hours later and take me to practice and my chest was burning. I was thinking ‘What in the world is this, I can’t even breathe!’ Well, it was smog. I had no idea what that was. Then the next morning, getting up and going on a 15-day road trip to play the Boston Celtics in 11 consecutive exhibition games. You got to the point where you hated  those guys. After about the first nine games there was a fights every night. It was awful.      

DL: The Sports Arena had just been built. Was it a nice?   

JW: It was beautiful and the seats were comfortable as far as I could tell. I didn’t know anything about arenas. The only thing I did  was prance around on the court out there. I didn’t go sit in the stands. There was one unique feature. They had a counter high up and everytime someone came through it showed. Our first two regular season games we played  against the New York Knicks and  the fiurst night we had 4,800 fans. Is was either a Friday-Saturday or Saturday-Sunday. The next night   we had about 4,200—and all of them were rooting for the Knicks. So it was a little bit different than West Virginia. We did not lose one home game in my three years at West Virginia—the referees made sure of it.  

DL: Did they make you go out in cars to promote the team? 

JW: Not in cars, but trucks. I would never say a word because  I was so embarassed coming from West Virginia where you couldn’t even get into a game. It was like a dog running through every  neighborhood hoping someone would catch you. Then to see the Rams and Dodgers on the front page of the newspapers, we were always on the last page. Who would’ve thought that in a few years they’d be on the back pages and one of them (the Rams) would be gone from town?   

DL: How much did play-by-play man Chick Hearn help build the Lakers brand? 

JW: He was a huge piece of the growth of the Laker franchise. In some respects, very much like Vin Scully with the Dodgers, he was more popular than the players. A lot of nicknamers, a lot of ‘Chickisms’ and I like to say this is the most unbiased biased person I’ve ever known.

DL: How big a thrill was it to meet Wilt Chamberlain? 

JW: It was a unique time for me. The only time I associated with him was when he was with the Lakers. You didn’t associate with players on other teams because of the way the schedule was devised and the traveling. A lot of times we played three nights in a row and you had to take the first available plane out after the game.  You didn’t get a lot of sleep but I’ve never been a huge sleeper in my life anyway.   

DL: Bill Sharman seemed like such a gentleman. What can you say about him?

JW: Really nice. A great competitor. He was a dirty player and he still denies it to this day but he was one of the notorious fighters in our league and when he was young he was a boxer, most people didn’t know that. There was a guy by the name of Andy Phillips and one year they got in eight fights. This was before my time in the league but Bill was a tough guy and I don’t know anyone who could say anything bad about him.

DL: Legend has it that he lost his voice in the 1972 season. Did you see that coming? 

JW: It was a situation where sometimes you get teams that you don’t have to say much too. They sort of just fit together. You throw  the ball over there and know the person’s going to be there. You’re tied together mentally… and that was one of those teams. The only bad thing about it is it was just too old to perpetuate itself for any length of time. It was sad for me when he got that way and he got to the point where he used a megaphone to make his voice louder. It was a sad time for me because I’d become good friends with him.       

DL: Were you aware of the three-point line in the ABA? 

JW: That was after I started playing and I think the consolidation of the two leagues at that point in time is what you see in the NBA today. The three-point line made it a more attractive game.   There were players that didn’t get drafted who belonged in the league and when they assimilated into the NBA it started the modern game as we see it. I’ve often wondered why they didn’t go with the red, white and blue ball.

DL: You had that unique way of getting your jumper off. How did you develop that?

JW: One of the most important things in shooting is to use your legs and a lot of times that last hard dribble makes you set and by doing that you automatically use your legs. I use to practice that in college all the time. I scratched myself a lot. You really have to practice that sort of thing. It was just something that came natural for me. The other thing is to learn different release points. I wish I’d had all the tools then, but when I was going to school I had  a shoot and follow the ball drill.

DL: How well did you know Coach Wooden at UCLA?

JW: I used to have lunch with him often at this little drug store in Westwood. We’d go in the back to eat and I’d have the same thing every day, a turkey sandwhich with a cup of chicken noodle soup. Most of the time on the day of the game I hardly ate. I got sick beforehand and I didn’t want to be throwing up all over the place… too much adrenaline. But John was a unique man. He was more than a basketball coach, he was more like a life teacher and he was someone I had great respect for.