Jerry West Biography - Born In Cheylan, West Virginia, Picked By Lakers In Nba Draft, Chronology, Shines In Playoffs - SELECTED WRITINGS BY WEST:
basketball player game hall
1938-
American basketball player
One of the best shooting guards in professional basketball history, Jerry West went on to lead the Los Angeles Lakers to basketball dominance during the last quarter of the twentieth century as first a coach and later general manager and executive vice president. After nearly four decades with the Lakers organization, West stepped down in 2000, but it did not take him long to decide that retirement was not for him. In October 2002, West hired on as president of the Memphis Grizzlies, a young team that had not yet made it into the playoffs. Nicknamed "Mr. Clutch" for his reputation for saving the game with last-minute heroics, West is the model for the silhouetted figure who is the focal point of the National Basketball Association (NBA) logo. As a player from 1960 through 1974, West became only the third player in NBA history to reach the 25,000-point plateau. He still holds the NBA record for the most free throws (840 in 1965-66) made in a single season. Only five years after leaving the game as a player, West was inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame in 1979. As his biography on the NBA's Web site states, West brought to the
Jerry West
game "a deadly jump shot, tenacious defense, obsessive perfectionism, unabashed confidence, and an uncompromising will to win."
SELECTED WRITINGS BY WEST:
(With Bill Libby) Mr. Clutch: The Jerry West Story. New York: Prentice Hall, 1969.
Additional Topics
He was born Jerome Alan West in Cheylan, West Virginia, on May 28, 1938. One of six children of Howard Stewart (a coal mine electrician) and Cecil Sue West (a homemaker), he was kept out of sports as a boy because of his small stature. He spent much of his free time shooting basketballs at a hoop nailed to a neighbor's storage shed, gradually perfecting his shooting style. So preoccupied wa…
The late-blooming West was the number one pick in the first round of the 1960 NBA draft, tapped by the Minneapolis Lakers on the eve of their move to Los Angeles. Although he helped the Lakers to improve their record from a dismal 25-50 in 1959-60 to 36-43 in 1960-61, his rookie season, West years later admitted that he did not yet feel truly comfortable in the NBA. "I was like a fish out o…
As good as he was as a player overall, West really shone in the playoffs. In the Lakers' 1965 finals against the Celtics, he averaged 46.3 points per game, the highest points-per-game average for any playoff series. When the Lakers again faced off against the Celtics in the 1969 finals, West was named most valuable player, the first and only time such honors have gone to a member of the los…
As much as West wanted to win an NBA championship, the toll taken by numerous injuries had forced him to seriously consider retirement prior to the 1971-72 season. In the end, he returned to the Lakers and helped the Los Angeles team to write a new chapter in NBA history. With Baylor largely sidelined by injury, the Lakers looked to West, Wilt Chamberlain, and Gail Goodrich to carry them through. …
West left professional basketball in 1974 as the third highest career scorer in NBA history, with a total of 25,192 points in 932 games. Only Chamberlain and Robertson had better records at that time, although in the years to come five other NBA players would surpass him. His career average of 27 points per game is the fourth highest ever, behind Michael Jordan, Chamberlain, and Baylor. West still…
In 1995 West was named executive vice president of the Lakers. During his years as an executive with the Lakers organization, the team made it into the playoffs eight times and won the NBA championship four times (1985, 1987, 1988, and 2000). In 1995 West was named the NBA Executive of the Year. Increasingly troubled by an irregular heartbeat caused by nervous tension, West retired from basketball…
An outstanding basketball player himself, Bill Sharman won NBA Coach of the Year honors in 1972 for coaching the Los Angeles Lakers to their first NBA championship ever. An important element in Sharman's winning strategy for the Lakers during the 1971-72 season was Jerry West. Born in Abilene, Texas, on May 25, 1926, Sharman was a four-year letter winner at the University of Southern Califo…
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User Comments
over 4 years ago
Chelyan is the spelling of Jerry West's birth place it's in Cabin Creek District of Kanawha County, WV
over 4 years ago
Jerry West was absolutely amazing! Many blessings to him.
almost 5 years ago
Jerry west has inspired me to do the best i can at basketball and i hope to someday beat his record of fre-throw (840)in one season
thanks
about 2 years ago
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