Baxter Holmes, ESPN Senior Writer
IT WAS NEAR midnight on the night of Feb. 27, 2020, and Jerry West was sitting in his automotive, parked exterior his Bel-Air house. He was considering retirement.
“Sometimes,” West instructed ESPN, “I feel like I just need to work on myself.”
“Sometimes, I just think not being involved might be good for me.”
As at some point turned to the following, he added: “Sometimes, enough is enough.”
The topic would come up yearly, possibly in the course of the season, or maybe within the offseason. But it arrived, with out fail, for many years, these near him say. There was a course of he'd work via. He'd declare this 12 months was his final, that he actually meant it this time, however then a brand new season would strategy, and West would take into consideration the problem of piecing collectively a puzzle to win all of it, of discovering the proper items that aligned simply so. His aggressive fireplace would burn once more, and he'd return for an additional probability.
It turned one thing of a working joke, one particular person near him stated — right here was Jerry West speaking about retiring after almost six many years within the NBA. But West wanted the sport, these round him stated. They believed the sport would restore some stability inside him, and that Jerry West can be again — as a result of Jerry West would all the time be again.
But, to these inside his inside circle, this era of anguish in 2020 was particularly pronounced for West, then an 81-year-old advisor for the LA Clippers.
Back in his automotive, West continued. “Look at all the tragedies every day that go on. You just wonder, ‘Are you pushing your luck by putting so much pressure on yourself to try to help make a difference?' … And I like pressure, but, after a while, I really don't know if it's good for you. I really don't — and particularly at this point in my life.”
It was nearly one month to the day after Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant, Bryant's daughter, Gianna, and 7 others died in a helicopter crash.
In the spring of 1996, West, then the Lakers' common supervisor, watched the 17-year-old Bryant's pre-draft exercise with the Lakers and, after a couple of minutes, declared, “To hell with this. I've seen enough.”
West knew Bryant was particular, knew the Lakers needed to purchase him by any means essential and relentlessly pushed to make it occur. The two remained shut for many years, forging a relationship during which West thought of Bryant to be nothing in need of a son.
After Bryant retired in 2016, ending a 20-season Lakers profession, West admired Bryant's efforts to construct a storytelling empire with books, TV exhibits, podcasts and movies, with Bryant even successful an Academy Award in 2018 for an animated quick movie titled “Dear Basketball.”
Bryant's sudden loss a month earlier, at age 41, marked a tragedy West had not totally grasped or accepted.
Bryant had focus and course past basketball, West stated, after which, he appeared inward.
“I don't know if I'd even be qualified to do anything else,” West stated. “Maybe dig a ditch, that's it.”
That feeling, West stated, was compounded when he checked out not solely Bryant but in addition LeBron James, Magic Johnson and an array of recent gamers who had been developing media firms, manufacturing firms and investing in myriad ventures exterior the sport.
“Those people have really had a career away from basketball,” West stated. “The only thing I've done in my whole life is to be involved with teams.”
On Sunday, West can be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor, honoring his govt roles with the Lakers and Memphis Grizzlies and his advisor roles with the Golden State Warriors and the Clippers.
It will mark a document third entry into the Hall; West was inducted as a participant in 1980, then as a member of the 1960 U.S. Olympic gold medal group in 2010. The ceremony will carry an undercurrent of sorrow; West died earlier this 12 months, on June 12, at age 86.
In a collection of unpublished interviews with ESPN, West described reaching a crossroads in life and in work.
He had been deeply wounded, he stated, by occasions the earlier summer time and persevering with into that fall — ones that totally and eventually severed any remaining ties to the Lakers, the franchise he spent 40 years serving to to construct.
During that tenure, first as a participant, then a coach, then an govt, West had helped elevate the group to historic heights earlier than this coldest of wars. In the years since, he had hoped for reconciliation. Then, in 2019, after his household turned concerned, probably the most well-known Lakers in historical past shared a once-unthinkable sentiment, one which he'd repeat privately and publicly within the years forward.
“I almost wish,” West instructed ESPN, “that I had never played or worked for them.”
SEVEN MONTHS EARLIER, on July 9, 2019, the Clippers despatched shockwaves via the NBA by touchdown Kawhi Leonard, the highest free agent available on the market who had simply led Toronto to a championship.
Inside the Clippers, there was jubilation. Inside the Lakers, there was frustration. Both groups had competed for Leonard, who had expressed a need to return to his Southern California roots, however he spurned the Lakers to affix the group they shared an enviornment with and one which, for many years, was principally well-known for its pronounced dropping.
The day after Leonard joined the Clippers, the group traded for star swingman Paul George, immediately making them title contenders.
Later that month, on July 27, ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Jerry West's son, Ryan, who had spent 10 years with the Lakers and final labored because the director of participant personnel, was leaving the group.
Team sources made clear Ryan wasn't leaving on his personal accord. Two sources near the matter stated Ryan's departure was tied to the idea of there being no room for progress throughout the franchise, as ESPN's Ramona Shelburne reported.
Jerry noticed it otherwise.
“They let him go because of me,” he stated one week after Ryan's departure.
He thought of his son, who now works as a professional personnel scout for the Detroit Pistons, to be collateral injury in his conflict with members of Lakers' management.
The Lakers declined to remark for this story.
West stated he apologized to Ryan, whom he described as “devastated.”
“It's like a soap opera,” a former longtime Lakers govt stated. “There is fallout, which is hurtful. Ryan, to me, it looks like he paid the price for all this pettiness.”
THREE MONTHS LATER, on Oct. 26, 2019, West's face contorted right into a grimace. He shook his head, pursed his lips and fidgeted in his seat. In entrance of him was an iPhone propped up in opposition to a desk centerpiece, broadcasting a Clippers sport with the Suns in Phoenix. The Clippers had been behind, making too many errors — too many turnovers, unhealthy passes, pointless fouls. It was the third sport of the season after the group's roster was overhauled with the additions of George and Leonard.
Seated beside his spouse, Karen, and a Clippers official, West was residing and dying (principally dying) by each possession, doing so from a front-row desk in the course of the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation twentieth Anniversary Gala, held in a ballroom on the J.W. Marriott in downtown Los Angeles. West was being honored with an award, which he obtained on the finish of the night.
Standing behind a lectern atop a stage, West thanked the occasion organizers and supplied considerate, humorous remarks about Murray, the legendary Los Angeles Times sports activities columnist whom West as soon as known as “The Michael Jordan of sportswriters.” As he closed out his five-minute speech, he paused and appeared throughout the ballroom at a handful of school college students from throughout the nation who had obtained scholarships from the inspiration.
“I don't know if you people like to read,” he stated. “I hated school because I didn't want to read. All I do is read now, but I read to learn.”
He closed his speech a beat later, however West wasn't precisely completed. His thoughts could not escape the most recent episode, the most recent grievance, in his longstanding feud with the Lakers.
It had been every week because the group had severed the final remaining tie between the 2 events — and damaged a promise made by the franchise's patriarch.
“Can you believe they took my tickets away?” West requested quietly again at his desk. “I just can't believe it.”
For the previous few weeks, West and his household had checked the mail for a supply that had arrived yearly in the course of the preseason for nearly twenty years: 4 season tickets to all 41 Lakers house video games at Staples Center.
The seats themselves had been prime real-estate — part 101, row 8, seats 1-4, positioned alongside the aisle, behind the scorer's desk and close to midcourt. They supplied West and members of his household a really perfect view of the group he performed 14 All-Star seasons for starting in 1960 (successful a title in 1972) and later led as its common supervisor for 18 years (throughout which they gained 5 extra championships). They may take a look at the group's retired jerseys and see West's No. 44.
“Those were always Jerry's seats,” one longtime ex-Lakers staffer stated.
The tickets, West stated then, had been promised to him by Dr. Jerry Buss, the Lakers' proprietor when he left the group in 2000. West stated Buss particularly added that West would have the tickets for so long as the Buss household owned the group. Buss died in February 2013. One particular person near the Buss household stated they weren't conscious of that specific promise, however that it could've been in step with Buss' needs.
“He always wanted to make sure Jerry was taken care of,” the particular person stated.
But with the season about to open on Oct. 22, and with the tickets nonetheless failing to reach, West started to suspect the worst.
After makes an attempt to achieve Tim Harris, the Lakers' president of enterprise operations, West stated his household obtained an e-mail from Dan Grigsby, the Lakers' common counsel, that stated they had been welcome to request Lakers tickets game-by-game and that they'd be accommodated.
West thought of the canceling of the season tickets to be private — “That's about as low as you can go,” he later stated.
Some Lakers executives had been shocked after they realized in regards to the scenario, which started circling via the group.
“You don't just take something away with no explanation — given who they did it to,” one group supply stated then.
West needed the story to go public — and components of it did. But, on the time, those that knew West and the Lakers' inner politics thought of it a petty however finally innocent flip within the decades-long feud between West and members of the Lakers' hierarchy.
To West, it represented one thing extra.
THOSE WHO HAVE labored contained in the Lakers and stay near the franchise say the unhealthy blood dates again almost 30 years.
Kurt Rambis, a participant on the Eighties Showtime period groups that West helped assemble, had served because the group's interim head coach within the lockout-shortened 1998-99 season. He'd posted a 24-13 document after taking up for a fired Del Harris, and the Lakers reached the Western Conference semifinals.
Rambis had turned down different head teaching alternatives, believing he was in line to grow to be the Lakers' head coach.
But West, then the group's common supervisor, pushed Dr. Buss to rent Phil Jackson, a call that may come to outline a whole period of Lakers dominance. Multiple staffers current on the time stated the choice to rent Jackson over Rambis sparked friction between Rambis and West in addition to between West and Rambis' spouse, Linda, the Lakers' govt director of particular initiatives who's an in depth pal and confidant of Jeanie Buss, now the group's governor.
In the following months, a second factor compounded the strain: the romantic relationship between Jeanie and Jackson, a partnership West was uncomfortable with and one about which he privately voiced his considerations to confidants. Word of his displeasure finally reached Jeanie.
The relationship between West and the group's management started to splinter much more, with West more and more iced out of the one NBA group he'd ever recognized. In 2000, after the group gained its sixth title with him in an govt function, he retired. “I felt underappreciated by leadership, and leadership is ownership,” West instructed the L.A. Times. “As we left the Forum to Staples Center, I'd say, ‘What am I doing here? What am I doing to myself?' Destructive feelings, a different drama every day. Leaving was the biggest relief of my life.”
Two years later, West joined the Grizzlies as their common supervisor, then the Warriors in 2011 as a advisor. Throughout, although, he privately rooted for the Lakers, sources near him stated. Then, in 2017, West started to hope not just for reconciliation but in addition for a reunion. That February, the Lakers overhauled their entrance workplace in dramatic trend, with Jeanie firing her brother, Jim, and longtime common supervisor Mitch Kupchak.
West, who was nonetheless with the Warriors, hoped the Lakers would name, however they by no means did.
“Sometimes I thought in my life that might be something that I can revisit, or they would want me to revisit,” West instructed “The Dan Patrick Show” in June 2017. “But that didn't happen. At times, I wouldn't say I was disappointed. But it kind of sent me a message.”
One supply near West stated, “I know for a fact that [Jerry] would've liked to come back, but there was no way they were going to bring him back.”
Instead, that spring, the Lakers employed Rob Pelinka, who had beforehand served as Bryant's agent, and Magic Johnson, who led the Lakers Eighties Showtime groups. In June, West joined L.A.'s different NBA group, the Clippers. In his introductory information convention, West appeared to take a dig on the Lakers, saying, “My last stop along the way, [I want] to be associated with people who are really basketball people, people I have respect for and, more importantly, I think, an incredible owner.”
The remark rankled Lakers' management, one supply with direct data stated.
From his new place, West continued to watch the Lakers, expressing dismay to confidants a couple of franchise he thought of to be missing management and course. Linda Rambis and Jeanie Buss would hear his criticisms via the grapevine, sources stated, and thought of West painfully bitter, even mean-spirited.
The toxicity of his relationship with the Lakers now underscored West's each dialog, those that knew him effectively stated. No matter what the topic was, it all the time got here up. Said one former colleague: “Jerry was a tortured soul.”
BACK INSIDE HIS automotive, in February 2020, West talked about how a lot he took the sport house with him — all of the successful and dropping, the stress to proceed the previous and stave off the latter, this limitless cycle.
“It makes me so crazy when you want a team to win so badly,” West stated.
His routine was ingrained. At Clippers video games, West would sit behind the basket nearest to the Clippers' bench, not removed from proprietor Steve Ballmer, who sat alongside the baseline.
The dichotomy of the 2 males was putting: Ballmer entrance and heart, pumping his fists and gesturing wildly in pleasure; West stoic, nearly obscured from view. Sometimes, Ballmer would stroll over to him and search his opinion.
West all the time had data to share, Ballmer instructed ESPN. It may be one thing small. “He'd look at anybody's shooting,” Ballmer stated, “and he'd say, ‘Oh s—, that guy's got to move his thumb a quarter of an inch.' Or maybe he'd talk about someone's defensive effort. ‘God, he's not working hard. God, he missed the angle, God, he missed this assignment.'”
He was blunt, the aggressive fireplace nonetheless burning via his veins at 81.
Sometimes at halftime, West would enterprise into the proprietor's room reverse the Clippers locker room to seek the advice of with Ballmer. Other occasions he'd be so upset he stayed away. Regardless of the result, West would depart earlier than the ultimate buzzer, slipping out into the closest tunnel together with his head down, as if ducking out of the rain. Nearby followers would shout “Logo!” But West not often slowed his decided stride.
He'd depart the world the place his statue — unveiled in 2011 — stands exterior, then he'd start the almost 17-mile drive from downtown Los Angeles to his Bel Air house, the place he would assessment the field scores from that night's video games and skim tales from across the league.
West by no means slept effectively, at the same time as a baby, all the time possessed by a seemingly limitless reservoir of vitality and restlessness. In mattress, the sport did not stray. Ideas, questions and recollections poured in, maintaining him awake for hours. “Even now, I dream of games,” he stated in February 2020.
That nightly cycle performed out for many years, however he discovered reprieve in studying. Growing up, he cherished Field & Stream journal and books on big-game looking in Africa. Then, in 1951, his older brother David died within the Korean War in what turned a defining second in West's life. He discovered solace by capturing hoops with David's basketball, however he additionally sought solutions in books about struggle, generals, leaders and dictators. He examine Lincoln, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin and Hitler, the cartels in Mexico and Colombia, the most recent historic tome from David Halberstam, something from Joan Didion and John McPhee, from Joseph Campbell and Bernard Malamud.
“As you move along in your life I think it's horrible to be ill-informed about a lot of things and more importantly history,” he stated. “I've always been curious about everything in my life. I mean literally everything.”
He would learn 10 books a month, he stated, generally three in every week, both hardcopy or on his iPad. “He read voraciously — a biography of so-and-so – [and he'd say], ‘What about this?' Or, ‘Hey, I just learned that.' Very thought-provoking,” Ballmer stated.
But the ache he felt from a lot of his life by no means strayed. In his Bel Air workplace, West stated he stored a Christmas card on his desk. It was the cardboard the Bryant household gave him in December 2019, one month earlier than Bryant died. West noticed that card every morning as he learn the newspaper, the smiling faces of Bryant and his household, trying again at him, the ache following him like a shadow.
“The hardest parts of my life,” he instructed ESPN, “I've been trying to erase those memories. I still haven't. I still haven't. I won't.”
WEST COULDN'T HAVE recognized how the world would change only a few weeks later.
Soon after he was speaking about attempting to depart the sport, the NBA suspended its season after Utah Jazz heart Rudy Gobert examined optimistic for COVID-19 earlier than a sport in opposition to the Oklahoma City Thunder. West nonetheless talked with the Clippers' management every day, however nobody knew when video games would restart, or what the world would appear like after they did. The time away, West stated, helped him really feel rejuvenated.
“Honestly, this has probably been an eye-opener for me,” West stated. When requested how he felt about attempting to depart the sport, he stated, “You know, I was thinking one more year wouldn't hurt me.” He needed to see the Clippers win a championship. “That would be an incredible way to leave the game,” he stated.
He was enthusiastic about their plans for a brand new enviornment. “It's going to be special,” he stated. He supplied effusive reward for Ballmer. “He is just a great guy. And he's so philanthropic, and his wife is just like him. They are such givers.” He would sit with Ballmer and it reminded him of time with Dr. Buss, when the 2 would discuss for hours about attempting to construct the Lakers into one thing particular.
“He's just like Jerry Buss,” West stated. “Except he's a lot wealthier.”
West loved his time away, however that acquainted itch returned.
On May 22, 2020, West stated he knew he was coming again.
“I'm still capable,” West stated, “and I'm still performing. I know when I'm not performing. No one has to tell me. I just love winning. But more importantly, I love the process of helping and being involved with trying to build a team that can be there every year.”
“I'll know when it's time for me to say goodbye,” West stated. “Trust me, I will.”
He continued with the Clippers, however the divide with the Lakers grew.
In December 2020, a year-old voicemail emerged during which West might be heard telling a confidant that the Lakers had been a “s— show.” In an April 2021 podcast look with ex-NBA gamers Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, Jeanie Buss named her 5 most essential Lakers and cited Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kobe Bryant, Magic Johnson, LeBron James and Phil Jackson. One month later, throughout a podcast with journalist Peter Vescey, West known as the omission from Buss “one of the most offensive things I've ever heard in my life.”
Some folks near West downplayed her feedback. She hadn't even named her father as among the many high 5 most essential Lakers ever. But for West, it marked yet one more slight.
In 2022, West instructed The Athletic, relating to his profession, “One disappointing thing is that my relationship with the Lakers is horrible. I still don't know why. And at the end of the day, when I look back, I say, ‘Well, maybe I should have played somewhere else instead of with the Lakers, where someone would have at least appreciated how much you give, how much you cared.'”
Reconciliation by no means got here.
At 7:27 a.m. on June 12, the Clippers introduced West had died, noting that his spouse, Karen, was by his aspect. The Clippers then launched private statements from the group, Ballmer, Clippers' head coach Tyronn Lue and Lawrence Frank, the group's president of basketball operations.
Soon after, Jeanie Buss issued a press release on Instagram.
“Today is a difficult day for all Laker fans,” she wrote. “I know that if my father were here, he would say that Jerry West was at the heart of all that made the Lakers great. He was an icon to all — but he was also a hero to our family. We all send our sympathies to Karen and the West family.”
West's presence can nonetheless be seen throughout the Lakers group.
His No. 44 traces the wall of the group's observe facility. Before tipoff on the Lakers' first preseason sport on Oct. 4 in Palm Desert, the group acknowledged West's achievements and held a second of silence. The Lakers will put on a commemorative No. 44 band on the left shoulder of their uniforms this season. On opening night time, an Oct. 22 matchup in opposition to the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Lakers will maintain an in-game celebration of West's legacy whereas gifting a No. 44 jersey to all Lakers followers in attendance. And this Sunday, the group plans to carry gatherings on the Hall of Fame to honor West and former Lakers guard Michael Cooper, who can be being inducted.
Two weeks after West's demise, Clippers entrance workplace personnel gathered inside a convention room on the group's observe facility in Playa Vista, California. The NBA draft — an occasion that had lengthy been one in every of West's favorites — was about to start. When they'd interview draft prospects, West would inform every participant one thing he noticed of their sport that wanted to enhance — and would by no means mince phrases. At the mix, West and Ballmer would sit aspect by aspect, and West would supply insights on all the things he'd seen.
But in the course of the draft in late June, contained in the room the place choices had been being made, Clippers executives noticed solely an empty seat, which the group reserved for West in tribute.
On the again of the chair, they hung a jacket akin to these West all the time wore. On the desk in entrance, they positioned an NBA ball — that includes the emblem of West's dribbling silhouette — and a white hat with all-caps blue-and-white lettering studying “LOGO.” Next to these tokens was a small placard with a quote:
“I enjoy winning, but more importantly, I enjoy the people I'm around. – Jerry West.”
A FEW MONTHS later, on a Friday afternoon in early September, Ballmer sat in his second-floor workplace on the new Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California. On the speaker telephone in entrance of him, he was requested for his recollections of bringing West aboard in 2017. Ballmer's detail-rich reply stretched seven and a half minutes.
He started together with his first assembly with West in July 2014, two months after Ballmer purchased the Clippers for $2 billion. Ballmer had traveled to Las Vegas for the NBA's annual summer time league showcase, and through one of many many conferences held there between group and league officers, he noticed West, who was nonetheless with the Warriors.
“You paid too much for the team,” West instructed him, giving Ballmer a mild ribbing.
Ballmer laughed. But as Ballmer settled into his function, his faculty roommate Dennis Wong — a former Warriors minority proprietor who turned a Clippers minority proprietor — supplied recommendation: “We need a guy like Jerry West.” They kicked round some names however got here up empty. Then, three years later, in the summertime of 2017, West's time with the Warriors got here to an finish.
“How about Jerry West?” Ballmer and Wong stated to one another.
West and Ballmer met in a collection on the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills and talked in regards to the group, their objectives, one another. “It felt right,” Ballmer stated. “The chemistry felt good.” They hammered out a deal for West to grow to be a advisor, and that was what West needed — to be eliminated, to be a voice however not the voice.
Ballmer may all the time see the immense, unrelenting stress that West placed on himself to assist them win season after season. “If I'm not of value, you let me know,” West would inform him.
But in West, Ballmer discovered a kindred spirit.
“Both of us were in a little bit of a weird position,” Ballmer stated. “I used to run Microsoft, and I was in the mix. Every day, I was like a player, if you will. And now with the Clippers, I'm not in the day-to-day mix. I approve budgets and big trades — nobody's going to make a blockbuster trade [without me weighing in] — but I'm not in the mix every day. So, I'm not exactly a consultant like Jerry was, but I'm a little closer to that than a guy who's in the mix every day. And Jerry, at least with us as a consultant, he was here all the time, but it's not the same for him as either being the GM or being the coach or being a player. We both had a role that was maybe alien to us, and yet we still brought the same fire to excel in the roles we could play.”
As Ballmer shared tales about West, he slipped between current and previous tense. At occasions, Ballmer took lengthy pauses to regain management of his feelings, his voice breaking typically. But he continued on, attempting to convey how a lot West meant to him. “I loved working with Jerry — loved, loved, loved working with Jerry,” Ballmer stated. “Just really a special, special, special human being to me.”
Ballmer considered how he needed to recollect West — and the way he hoped others would keep in mind him. The idea of West's legacy had weighed on many who knew him effectively. They knew West might be sophisticated, that he may have good days and unhealthy. His latest portrayal within the “Winning Time” HBO collection deeply irritated many in his inside circle, particularly West, depicting him as a raging caricature in the course of the Lakers' Showtime period. Those round him imagine it missed his generosity, his humor, his heat. More than that, it represented one other wound for a person already scarred from so many others.
Ballmer noticed West otherwise. Yes, he was a legend who had cast arguably probably the most storied profession within the historical past of basketball, however he additionally was a pal, one who may all the time make him chuckle.
When information broke that West was going to be inducted into the Hall of Fame for the third time, Ballmer congratulated him, however West shrugged it off, saying he wasn't even positive what he was being inducted for this time.
Looking again, Ballmer stated he harbored two regrets. “Regret number one,” Ballmer stated, “Jerry and I always talked about playing some golf, and we never did. And regret number two, Jerry thought I wasn't a very snazzy dresser. He brought me shirts one time, and he threatened to get me a suit because he didn't think I dressed well enough. My regret is, we never got that done. We never got that suit.” As he recounted the reminiscence, his physique shook with laughter, however then his voice broke laborious, caught in his throat. He took one other lengthy second to assemble himself.
Ballmer stated the group's behavior of asking, “What do you think Jerry would say about this one?” will final for a while. West all the time stated he needed the Clippers to win as a result of he cherished the folks there, and since it could imply a lot to their longtime followers, to town of Los Angeles and to Ballmer.
The Clippers supplied West with a house when he misplaced the one he had with the Lakers, made him really feel needed at a time when he wanted it most. “It's not easy being rejected,” West stated in February 2020. “And I've been rejected along the way.” He tried, as finest as he may, to look forward. There was all the time one other season.
On June 2, he and Ballmer spoke in regards to the coming season whereas Ballmer drove via Seattle, the place he lives. It was a sunny and delightful day, Ballmer stated. “I remember it very vividly.” West shared particularly excellent news: His well being was bettering. “I got this thing,” he instructed Ballmer. “I'm coming back.”
West was excited. He deliberate to be there for opening night time, as soon as once more.
Ten days later, he was gone.
