NBA legend Jerry West not impressed with LeBron joining Lakers
It’s apparently going to take more than just signing the league’s best player for the Los Angles Lakers to impress “The Logo.”
When Jerry West ran the Lakers, he was definitely not afraid of big game hunting.
Back in the summer of 1996, he traded starting center Vlade Divac to Charlotte — for a kid named Kobe Bryant.
Seven days later, West tilted the axis of the NBA by signing Shaquille O’Neal away from Orlando.
The next season, he hired Phil Jackson as head coach.
As an adviser for the Golden State Warriors, he helped spearhead the effort to sign Kevin Durant.
So you’d think that West, now a Clippers consultant, would be impressed by Lakers President of Basketball Operations Magic Johnson’s signing of LeBron James.
You’d be wrong, as he told Sports Illustrated.
“All due respect to the Lakers, who handled everything well, but as these things go, LeBron was not a tough free-agent signing,” West said. “LeBron wanted to come to L.A. and he wanted to come to the Lakers. Period.
“He has a family he’s thinking about. He has a home here. He has a son whom he wants to keep in one school in Los Angeles. He will be a celebrity out here, sure, but it’s a place where, once in a while, he can get lost, be himself. You can’t do that everywhere.”
There certainly seems to be some truth in West’s statements, as James reportedly didn’t meet with any other teams; he had agent Rich Paul sit down with Philadelphia.
Still, it couldn’t have been easy for Lakers fans to hear West diminish the accomplishment.
And it certainly was strange for West to talk about his wish to be able to shop his talents during his career.
That came in his defense of players choosing their teams.
“It’s mind-boggling to me how people have gotten mad at these guys, like Kevin Durant and LeBron, for leaving,” he told SI. “The way I see it, no player owes any city an apology. Certainly not LeBron, who has done so much for Cleveland. Hell, I wish I had had some freedom to move when I was playing.”
Interestingly, if West did have a choice, LA might not have been his home, as he told USA Today.
“That celebrity factor wasn’t a consideration for me when I got here in 1960,” West said. “I was 22 years old and didn’t know anything. I didn’t chase any endorsements and didn’t get any. The hangout factor of L.A. wasn’t big for me because I didn’t hang out.”
It sounds like as the years go on, West’s purple and gold ties are fading away.
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