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March 09, 2006
Owning Jerry West
Jerry West . . . was no ordinary player. The son of an electrician who labored for a West Virginia coal company, West joined the Lakers in 1960 after helping the U.S. win an Olympic gold medal at the Rome Olympics. With sidekick Baylor, West practically invented pro basketball on the West Coast. His all-around play earned him annual trips to the All-Star game (including MVP honors in 1972 on his home court, The Forum in Inglewood).So if you're reading this and you're thinking, "Dang, Zeke the Beak from Cabin Creek must really matter to West Virginians," you'd be right. Facts like this are a matter of vast, shared pride:"He's one of the greatest players that's ever stepped on the court," said Abdul-Jabbar, who played against West when he entered the NBA with the Milwaukee Bucks. "Clutch shooter, great heart, played the game at both ends of the floor."
On the Basketball Hall of Fame web site, the biography of West includes this sentence: "His image is silhouetted in the NBA logo."So I know I'm far from the only West Virginian who greets ststements like this with scorn and indignation:
Over the years, however, the NBA has refused to recognize publicly that West is the player in the logo.If the NBA wants to update that logo, that's their right. But in the meantime, they ought to own up to the fact—which the designer of the logo himself does—that it's Jerry in that graphic.
Posted by senioritis at March 9, 2006 09:31 AM