WVU Sports Hall of Fame
The most famous athlete to ever wear the Gold and Blue, Jerry West is universally considered one of basketball's all-time greats.
West’s inspirational journey from East Bank High to professional sports stardom with the Los Angeles Lakers is a source of great pride to West Virginians everywhere. Owner of 17 WVU records, he led the Mountaineers to three of their greatest seasons on the hardwood, winning 81 of 93 games while he was in the lineup, and coming within two points of winning the national championship in 1959.
During West's sophomore year in 1958, West Virginia finished ranked No. 1 in both the AP and UPI polls with a 26-1 record after winning the KIT and the Southern Conference titles before falling in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. But West and his teammates made up for it a year later by marching all the way to the finals where they lost to Pete Newell and Cal, 71-70. That Mountaineer team is still considered the best in school history. West tied the NCAA five-game tournament record of 160 points (32.0 points per game), including his 28-point and 11-rebound performance in the championship game. He was named Most Outstanding Player of that year's Final Four. Later, he was named to the U.S. Pan American Games team which won the gold medal.
West was a second team All-American as a sophomore in 1958, and the next two seasons in 1959 and 1960, he earned consensus All-America honors, including a senior campaign in which he averaged 29.3 points and 16.5 rebounds per game. West was co-captain of the 1960 Olympic team along with Oscar Robertson, the duo leading USA to a 5-0 record and a victory over Russia to claim the Gold medal at Rome.
West was drafted No. 2 overall by the Los Angeles Lakers and spent 14 outstanding seasons in the NBA, compiling just about every honor possible. An All-NBA first team selection seven times, West also made the All-NBA defensive team four straight years from 1970-73.
He established a then-NBA single game scoring record for guards on Jan. 17, 1962, with 63 points against New York. Eight years later, in 1970, West led the league in scoring with an average of 31.2 points per game.
In the seventh game of the 1969 NBA Finals, despite playing with a painful groin injury, he still managed to score 42 points, grab 13 rebounds and hand out 12 assists in a losing effort to earn series MVP honors. Nine times, West's Laker teams made the NBA finals, but Los Angeles lost eight of them before finally getting the franchise’s first title in 1972. Despite his team's lack of success in the finals, West remains one of the game's greatest postseason players by virtue his 29.1 career postseason scoring average.
He made one of the most memorable shots in NBA history -- a game tying 60-footer at the buzzer against the New York Knicks in the 1970 NBA finals – but the Lakers lost that game, too, in overtime. He was selected to play in the NBA all-star game 14 times, winning MVP honors in 1972; West at one time held the NBA record with 3,708 playoff points.
West became the fifth player in NBA history to surpass 6,000 career assists and when he chose to retire before the start of the 1975 season, he ranked among the NBA's top 10 in career scoring, minutes, field goals and field goal percentage.
The Cheylan native was elected to the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame in 1980, and in 1997, he was named one of the NBA's 50 greatest players to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the league.
In 2007, before West Virginia’s game against Seton Hall, the school officially unveiled a statue of West, created by Morgantown, West Virginia, artist Jamie Lester, outside the WVU Coliseum. Four years later, on Feb. 16, 2011, a 1,500-pound bronze statue of West dribbling a basketball was dedicated at the Staples Center in Los Angeles where the Lakers now play. West’s statue joins likenesses of Magic Johnson, Wayne Gretzky, Chick Hearn and Oscar De La Hoya at Star Plaza.
For years, West was known in NBA circles as "The Logo" for the belief that he was the player depicted on the logo. Graphic designer Alan Siegel confirmed that he did choose a photograph of West dribbling a basketball as his depiction of the NBA's logo when he created it in 1969.
West served as general manager and president of the Lakers, helping them to five NBA titles in the 1980s and six overall (he was named NBA Executive of the Year in 1995) before retiring after the 2000 season. He came out of retirement to become general manager of the Memphis Grizzlies in 2002, earning NBA executive of the year again in 2004 before retiring a second time in 2007 after guiding the franchise to NBA championship contention and the team’s first-ever playoff appearances.
More recently, West’s expertise came into play when the Golden State Warriors coaxed him out of retirement to be a consultant and executive board member in 2011. In 2015, the Warriors produced the best record in the NBA and won the league championship, West’s seventh as an NBA executive. The following season, the Warriors set the NBA record for regular season wins with 73.
He was named an inaugural member of WVU’s Mountaineer Legends Society in 2017. West's jersey number 44 was officially retired prior to the LSU game played on Nov. 26, 2005.
West died on June 12, 2024, in Los Angeles.
