The news last week about the death of Jerry West was a stunner. Jerry West, dead? Of course, West, like the rest of us, faced mortality, but he was not like the rest of us, was he?
Unless we stopped to think about it, it just felt as though West would always be there. He was so etched in the psyche of West Virginians that he was immortalized.
Jerry West. Just saying his name in any sports conversation triggered stories. One old timer remembered seeing West play in the old Field House at WVU. Another remembered watching West’s heroics with the Lakers. Many others said West was their hero growing up.
As West Virginians, we clung to him desperately. Regardless of whatever disparaging remark was made about our state, no matter what struggles we endured, we always had Jerry West. His greatness was undisputed, and we basked in that.
West fans suffered through WVU’s one-point loss in the national championship game to California in 1959 and the eight Laker losses in the NBA championships during his tenure, but West, by his own admission, internalized the losses as personal failures.
Finally, after the Lakers beat the New York Knicks to win the title in 1972, West said, “This is one summer I’m really going to enjoy.” However, that joy was short-lived since the Lakers lost the title game the following season to the Knicks.
Yet, through it all West was consistently recognized as one of the greatest players in league history. He is the only player on a losing team to be named MVP of the NBA finals (1969 loss to the Celtics). Perhaps that, more than anything, is indicative of his NBA career.
He is also regarded as one of the greatest sports general managers. He assembled the talent for the Laker dynasty in the 1980s and was responsible for the famous deal that brought free agent Shaquille O’Neal to Lakers, while drafting Kobe Bryant out of high school.
West was not a warm and fuzzy hero to us. As the New York Times wrote in West’s obituary, “Both [Roland] Lazenby’s biography and West’s own book depict him as a troubled perfectionist and a relentless, pitiless self-examiner — someone who, in West’s own words, was ‘aloof and inscrutable,’ possessed of ‘a demon-filled mind’ and unable to fully enjoy his many successes.”
That was on full display in West’s candid memoir, “West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life.” He wrote of growing up in West Virginia, “I am the fifth of six children, raised in a home, a series of them actually, that was spotless but where I never learned what love was, and am still not entirely sure I know today.”
We wanted to meet him, talk to him, honor him, but West typically shied away from that. He wrote, “I have always, all my life, experienced an odd sensation whenever I am singled out. I am embarrassed by the attention, uncomfortable with it.”
We did not know or fully understand this about our hero until that book was published 13 years ago, and we are fortunate that he had the courage to write so honestly about himself. He gave us the opportunity to see him as more than a sports icon with GOAT statistics, but rather as a complicated, conflicted and tortured human being.
That autobiography was yet another example of West giving everything he had to a project, pushing through the emotional pain threshold to provide a brutally frank accounting of his life. Unfortunately, some will make judgments about West based on the inaccurate portrayal of him as a crazed and ill-tempered executive in the ham-handed HBO series “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” West may have been driven to obsession, but he was not an angry maniac. West was deeply offended by the depiction, and we were too.
I wonder if West was ever able to appreciate what he gave to us? Whether he knew it or not, he carried us with him on those broad, square shoulders throughout his life. We celebrated his successes and suffered along with him at the defeats.
Of course, he suffered more than all of us put together. That often comes with greatness; the agonizing belief that you are never quite good enough. But we know that Jerry West gave all that he had and more.
Even if he could not fully appreciate all that he accomplished, we as West Virginians did throughout his life, and we still can as part of his legacy.
Hoppy Kercheval is a MetroNews anchor and the longtime host of “Talkline.” Contact him at hoppy.kercheval@wvradio.com.
