VICE Sports Q&A: Basketball Icon Jerry West

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Jerry West—the former Lakers star, NBA logo, "Mr. Clutch," and highly successful general manager and architect of the "Showtime" championships in Los Angeles—is now, at age 77, an executive board member and minority owner of the Golden State Warriors. He's still going strong.

VICE Sports: You have a fancy title, but what is your role now with the Golden State Warriors?

Jerry West: I am involved in a lot of stuff. On the basketball side, we have a very young front office and I am here for them to exchange ideas. I give them my thoughts and I try to talk about some of the things that I have witnessed and experienced in my life, both as a player and as an executive. I am also on the executive board and I am a minority owner, so it is fun to be involved in a lot of different ways.

At the end of the day, basketball is part of my life. I have been a basketball person and a player. The sport has consumed my life and it still does, even at this stage of my life. I am thrilled to be involved, not only with a great, growing franchise but a very, very talented young team.

Do you have a hands-on role with the Warriors? Are you there to evaluate talent?

There isn't so much talent evaluation. We have a really deep team and this team is the right kind of age. We have people that are in their early 30s. We have a lot of people who are 25 to 27 and they play a lot for us. We think we have a terrific future. Obviously, last year was a magical year, especially in the sense that we didn't have any catastrophes along the way in terms of player injuries. We had some, but they didn't devastate us the way injuries have affected other teams in the past. This is a very capable franchise and, honestly, we do have a chance to be as good, or better, than last year.

How good was it for you to be a part of the Warriors getting back on top of the NBA again? Were you able to enjoy it? Because the stories about you from your Lakers days were that you weren't able to enjoy the success.

I have a completely different role with this organization and that helps me to enjoy the games a little bit more. It was great to be involved with our young staff and to watch this team play last year. It was a joy to watch because we play the game the right way. We have passing and movement. We were the No. 1 offensive team and the No. 1 defensive team in basketball, and I think that attests to the greatness of this team last year. Will we be able to duplicate that this year? No one knows, but I know that even in our training camp this year you could see a difference. It was obvious that this team was far ahead of where it was last year.

Jerry, you know as well as anybody how difficult it is to repeat as a champion. What is the biggest obstacle in the way of any team trying to repeat as NBA champions?

First of all, there is health. Then there is the ability to go out there and lay it on the line every night. Some teams relax and rest on their laurels, but we have some really highly competitive people. Plus, we are young. Those younger players are going to strive to get even better, and that will put us in the position to be another dangerous team in the playoffs. Think about it. We won 67 games and never lost three games in a row. We never had any juicy items for the press to get into and I attribute that to this incredible group of kids that we have, and I am old enough to call them kids.

They are just wonderful young men who get along like I have never seen a team get along. Success breeds success, and I think these people love to win. At the end of the day, I think that is why we will be very, very good again, if we can stay healthy.

Isn't it interesting the way that puzzle pieces fall in place? Last year, Steve Kerr was offered the Knicks' head-coaching job and he decided not to take it. What a bonanza that turned out to be for Golden State, and then Steph Curry, who had so many problems with his ankles over the years, came back and had an incredible season. It was pretty much a miraculous year, wasn't it?

I think he finally got completely healthy. Steph is a remarkable smaller player. He doesn't play the game with force. He is a joy to watch. If you were in our locker room, you wouldn't even know that he was the most valuable player in the league last year. He's got humility and what you see with him is what you get. That's the kind of person he is. Klay Thompson is the very same way. The very same.

We've got one of the most underrated players in the league on our team in Draymond Green. He is a tremendous player—not good but tremendous. People look at him. He is listed at six-foot-six, six-foot-six-and-a-half, but he plays a lot bigger. His determination and his drive and his desire to win are second to none of any player I have ever been with. And he is going to get better as a player, by the way.

We have just a lot of really good players here. You can interchange players and you can mismatch. The difference between this team and other teams is that this team can be behind by fifteen points and get back in the game in just five trips down the floor because of the two guys that we have in our backcourt.

It is fun to watch them play because they really like each other. You can see that they like each other. There are no petty jealousies at all. I attribute an awful lot of that to our front office and general manager, Bob Myers. He stepped in here and did a marvelous job.

We are keeping our fingers crossed that we can stay healthy because we think some of these players that played so well last year can play even better this year.

Your son Jonnie is an assistant general manager with the Santa Cruz Warriors, of the D-League, and your son Ryan is now the director of player personnel for the Lakers. What have you told, or taught, your sons about the business?

First of all, a work ethic is one of the most important things, along with loyalty to the franchise that you're working with. The biggest thing, though, for anyone who has aspirations to get involved in this business is you have to be a basketball junkie. When the season is on, it is a 24/7 job. When the season is off, it is probably 24/6. It is an all-year job now.

Having the right personnel and having draft picks are really important. Don't miss on those draft picks! They are valuable in trying to rebuild a team.

I am hopeful that both of them understand just how much I cared about the game. I think it's important how you treat the people that you work with. You have to create an environment that is fun, where people want to come to work. At the end of the day, if you can do all that and get the right people working for you in all areas, you have a chance to win and win big.

I read your book, West by West. I hope they paid you a lot of money for that book because I was amazed at how you bared your soul in those pages. I saw a side of Jerry West that I'd ever seen before. Why so candid?

When you get older, you do become much more open about yourself. I never believed that the spotlight should be on me. I don't care for it. Somewhere along the line, it became important for me to talk about the things that really affected my life, not only as an executive but also the way I feel about things. All lives are not equal and we all don't grow up alike. I learned a lot of lessons in my life by growing up in a tough household, but I learned much more about life when it came to losing. I'm not talking about basketball games; I'm talking about a lot of things in my life.

Self-worth is a very, very important thing to have. I always felt that maybe my self-worth was based upon my ability to play the game at a high level, but it turned out that that still wasn't good enough for me. When I look back on it, I say to myself how fortunate I was to find something that I absolutely loved to do with my life. I was somebody who loved the game, but I loved the competition more than anything. I despised losing and I was a driven person. I am still driven today. I love to compete and even though I am 77 years old now, I don't feel like it. I don't act like it and I'm still competitive. That is what still drives me today. I think a lot of it was because of my childhood. Nothing was given to me in my life. I had to earn everything.

I learned an awful lot by losing, particularly losing for our fans in Los Angeles. They were so great to us and it was just an incredible ride for me. The way people have treated me in Los Angeles and embraced me, I am forever grateful. I don't think the people really know how I felt about our fans and how they embraced me and our franchise.

Is part of the reason for that because you have been a very guarded individual? You had so much going for you and Laker fans loved you so much, one would think that you would just bask in that glory, but even in your book you say that "the high opinion others may have had of Jerry West has never been shared by me. I don't allow it." Why not?

The greatest word in the world to me is "humility." I see so many people who have success but just don't have humility. We were lucky to be the athletes and the people who succeed in life.

I just learned at an early age that this wasn't about me. This was about a bunch of guys trying to win. Maybe I had some influence on winning, but adulation is not something that I feel comfortable with and I will never feel comfortable with it. I loved the players that I played with and I didn't care who they were. If they were tough guys or guys that some people didn't particularly like as athletes, I tried to embrace them in the locker room.

I like continuity in teams. I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make in this league is that they keep hiring and firing coaches. Honestly, the people who do that continually are the ones who should be fired, not the coaches. They hired those coaches in the first place. I just believe that it is really important to remember where I came from and the only way that I can do that is to remember the word "humility".

You had such success in Los Angeles. I know there were some difficulties with Phil Jackson. You didn't think he respected you. I know there were some communications breakdowns between you and Jerry Buss near the end, but how difficult was it for you, after all those years in the organization, to actually decide to leave the Lakers?

It was probably the easiest thing I've ever done in my life, Larry.

Really?

Oh yeah. I am very realistic about things. Most people don't realize that we have a shelf life at one place. My shelf life was up there. There were things that I did not like internally. Things that I did not think were consistent with what the Lakers had done for years. Maybe I had gotten to the point where I expected everyone to treat everyone the same way. This is no knock against anyone—it was just me. At the end of the day, it was just about me being totally consumed and so overwhelmed by the winning involved.

We had created something really special there and our fans expected us to win at a high level, but it was time for me to go. When I left, I told myself that the only thing I wanted to do in my life was to work for the worst team in basketball because, frankly, I got tired of hearing people say that we were lucky, with the Lakers, to have the kind of success that we had. Honestly, I believe that I was better than people thought I was. I never said that publicly.

So I went to Memphis, and those were probably five of the best years of my life. I was testing myself to see if I was any good. To see if I could really make a difference. At the end of the day, I think we did.

Let's go back to the Lakers 1972 championship season and the 33-game winning streak. Bill Sharman was the head coach. What is your best memory from that season?

Well, I can compare it to last year's Warriors season. It was magical. The only negative thing for me was that after nine games, Elgin Baylor had to retire. He is someone I loved as a person. One of the greatest people I have ever been around in my life. More important, he was someone that I shared a lot of heartache with in some of the games we lost that were meaningful, not only to the two of us but to our team and the people in Los Angeles. When I heard that Elgin would have to retire, I thought, Oh God. I guess I'm going to be next.

Then, all of a sudden, we started winning. We couldn't lose. After a while, it got to the point where we knew it was a special group of players. We could win a game any way. A physical game. High-scoring game. Low-scoring game. We could win any way. This was a team that looked like, finally, destiny was on our side.

In the 1960s, the Lakers lost to Boston six times in the NBA Finals. You have said that those losses still haunt you, but is it true that you still hate the color green and won't visit the city of Boston?

I haven't been to the city of Boston since, but I will tell you right now that the fans in the city are fantastic. They always treated us so well.

But I do not have anything green in my closet, I will tell you that.

In your role as the Lakers general manager, what was the toughest cut that you ever had to make?

Probably the worst thing that I had to do, and I was almost forced to do it, was trading Nick Van Exel to Denver. He was one of my favorite players of all time, but he obviously wasn't very happy with me because I would try, from a different position as a GM, to get him to understand that there are just certain things that you have to do in this league in order to survive. I told him that he had to be able to live with his coaches and live with his teammates, but there were just a whole bunch of things that happened that would not allow that to go forward. The thing that I liked about Nick was that he had an unbelievably difficult life growing up. He was so competitive, so it was a really sad day for me when I had to trade him.

The other one that was very similar was when I traded Norm Nixon. He and Magic Johnson both needed the ball to be successful. Jerry Buss and I talked about them and I said, "I don't call Magic Johnson 'Magic Johnson.' I always call him Earvin Johnson, but he was Magic Johnson when he had the basketball in his hands. When he played and he didn't have the ball in his hands, he was Earvin Johnson."

I think our fans got to expect Magic Johnson instead of Earvin Johnson. He and Norm were too similar in the way they played the game. They both needed the ball. Those were horrible days for me and I will never forget that Jack Nicholson, who was an incredible Lakers fan, wore black to our games for a solid month. He and I finally had to have a talk about that.

I don't enjoy situations like that. A lot of criticism gets directed toward you and some nasty things get said. You can't respond to people like that. You have to try to do what's best for the franchise. At that time, the move was best for the franchise. I'm not saying that I was right, but it was best for the franchise.

When you think back to that day in 1992 when Magic announced that he was HIV positive, what sticks out in your mind?

I was scared to death for him. I was so concerned for his life, because that was an area that none of us really knew much about. It was amazing to me to watch this guy get up in front of a microphone and talk about it. It took me about two weeks to deal with it. I didn't even want to work, to be honest. I just wanted to get away, but you realize that you have to get back and engaged again because you are entrusted with a franchise that you had played for and you loved. It was one of the most horrible times of my life.

In 1996, you signed Shaq as a free agent and you worked the deal with Charlotte in the draft to get Kobe. Is it true that you worked so hard on those transactions that you wound up in the hospital with exhaustion?

If I am involved in something, I am consumed. That's my personality. I don't believe it when people say, "You can't do this" or "You can't do that." I am pretty hardheaded and pretty stubborn, but people who are entrusted to run an organization have to have the intestinal fortitude and toughness to deal with things in good times and bad.

In good times, you are always worried about somebody getting hurt. In bad times, you are just trying to get better and you work harder. That was an extremely difficult time in my life and, for the first time, it made me realize that I was not Superman in terms of handling that kind of pressure and stress everyday. My body said, "Look! You've got a problem here." Honestly, it took me about two weeks to get back to the point where I felt that I had the energy level to be able to continue, but it was worth it. Sometimes when you are in the process of doing it, you don't realize the toll that it takes.

You were around legendary Lakers play-by-play announcer Chick Hearn for a lot of years. What did Chick mean to you?

Oh my God! When we first got to Los Angeles, the Lakers didn't have any "voice" on the road. Then Chick got involved and I realized what a great guy he was. He always talked about his "unbiased" view of the game, but he was the most biased "unbiased" man that I ever knew in my life.

We used to travel real tough. We traveled on commercial flights and Chick would get on the planes and he enjoyed having a drink every once in awhile—about every five minutes. Chick used to talk to the people on the plane and he made up stories about how he was an air ace during the war. It was hilarious.

Traveling with Chick was always special. We would have a late game and then get on the plane and Chick would be sitting there yelling, "Come on! Let's get this damn thing off the ground!" He was unique. He was special and he will never be replaced, Larry. Trust me!

Chick used to tell me that when the Lakers first moved from Minneapolis to Los Angeles there was no fan base in Southern California and the players and the coaches would get on flatbed trucks and drive through the streets of Los Angeles shouting through megaphones, trying to get fans to come to the games. Do you remember those days?

What's really funny is that it felt like we were on a hayride. It was one of those flatbed trucks that they used to use for hayrides back East or in the Midwest. I had never been so embarrassed in my life because when I played in West Virginia, we sold out every game. Even when we played on the road, my stature had grown in college, so we had sellout crowds.

I think the first two nights that the Lakers played in Los Angeles, we played against the Knicks both nights. We had crowds of around 4,000 the first night and 3,400 the second night, and everyone was a Knicks fan. I was saying to myself, "What do we have to do here to upstage the Dodgers and the Rams?" who were a big part of the sports culture in Los Angeles.

The stories with Chick? I can't even repeat them. They were so funny. He was a character and I loved his passion. He was as good as it gets, but he was like a player. He had a game-day routine. Chick would get to the Forum at 3:30 in the afternoon to get ready for that night's game. It just showed you what a great professional he was.

Correction: A photo caption originally stated that Jerry West attended the University of West Virgina, not West Virginia University. It has since been updated.