Jerry West, RIP
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Other than West being a great, great player, he came back into the public consciousness with Winning Time, a pretty good if certainly not great show about the Lakers in the 80s that got unjustly cut off in the second season. What made it controversial in the first season was the portrayal of West as a man who cared very, very deeply about basketball and the Lakers, but also as a man scarred from a horrible abusive childhood with massive anger management issues. People had trouble actually disputing the characterization. They just thought it was mean-spirited. West himself was so furious that he talked about suing for defamation and claiming he would go to the Supreme Court if necessary. This did not exactly help his case that the portrayal was defamation.
But people want heroes I guess and West was a complicated guy. He was also one hell of a player and one hell of a general manager. The 80s Lakers are not the same without him and until the very end of his life, he remained around the hardwood, even attending as many Summer League games as possible, which is impressive given that these are just AAU ball all over again, where no one plays defense or has any clue what they are doing with all these other guys they’ve never played with before. I of course don’t remember watching him play and many of you do have those memories.