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Jerry West: The Life and Legend of a Basketball Icon |  | Author: Roland Lazenby
Publisher: ESPN
Category: Book
List Price: $28.00
Buy New: $15.86
as of 9/9/2010 10:05 MDT details
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Seller: jasonbookstore
Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 47475
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 448
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.5
ISBN: 0345510836
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.323092
EAN: 9780345510839
ASIN: 0345510836
Publication Date: February 23, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
When in 1969 the NBA sought an emblem for the league, one man was chosen above all as the icon of his sport: Jerry West. Silhouetted in white against a red-and-blue backdrop, West’s signature gait and left-handed dribble are still the NBA logo, seen on merchandise around the world.
In this marvelous book—the first biography of the basketball legend—award-winning reporter and author Roland Lazenby traces Jerry West’s brilliant career from the coalfields near Cabin Creek, West Virginia, to the bare-knuckled pre-expansion era of the NBA, from the Lakers’ Riley-Magic-Kareem Showtime era to Jackson–Kobe–Shaq teams of the early twenty-first century, and beyond.
But fame was not all glory.
Called “Mr. Clutch,” West was an incomparable talent—flawless on defense, possessing unmatched court vision, and the perfect jumper, unstoppable when the game was on the line. Beloved and respected by fans and fellow players alike, West was the centerpiece of Lakers teams that starred such players as Elgin Baylor and Wilt Chamberlain, and he went on to nine NBA Finals. Yet in losing eight of those series, including six in a row to the detested Boston Celtics, West became as famous for his failures as for his triumphs. And that notoriety cast long shadows over West’s life on and off the court.
Yet as the author discovered through scores of exclusive interviews with West’s teammates, colleagues, and family members, West channeled the frustration of his darkest moments into a driving force that propelled his years as an executive. And in this capacity, the success that often eluded West on the court has enabled him to reach out to successive generations of players to enrich and shape the sport in immeasurable ways.
Though sometimes overshadowed by flashier peers on the court, Jerry West nevertheless stands out as the heart and soul of a league that, in fifty years, has metamorphosed from a regional sideshow into a global phenomenon. And in Jerry West, Roland Lazenby provides the ultimate story of a man who has done more to shape basketball than anyone on the planet.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
 A Different Kind of Book June 7, 2010
Jeffrey C. Bullock
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is different than the average sports book you'll read - some reviewers have commented on the excess coverage on West's beginnings and yes, while it is a tad extensive - almost half the book covers his life thru college - it is refreshing, too. Far too many sports books have too many game summaries but you don't learn much about the person - if you're reading this, you know who Jerry West is and don't want to bother with trivial game descriptions - a few game summaries are okay but a book with too many is tiresome reading. And speaking about you know who Jerry West is, why do so many reviewers try to give you his life story, like we don't know who he is?? - if you're reading all these reviews, then you obviously know who Jerry West is and it's tiresome reading to slog thru those kinds of reviews - I mean, we know who Jerry West is, just tell us about the book.
 A Disappointment May 31, 2010
J. Winfield
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I too was a huge West fan who wore his number through high school and practiced in the mud on my dirt court just like he did. I was eager to read the book after reading the rave review from Tim Rutten in the LA Times.
I was disappointed. The nearly 80 pages at the outset, covering the plight of West's relatives going back several generations, seem endless, and are told at the snail's pace of a West Virginian's dialect. If only Lazenby had directed his considerable research hours into more interesting and pertinent topics, such as West's career after retiring as a player -- which gets a shallow and perfunctory 30 pages at the end of the book. What comes in between, West's playing career, will be no news to anyone who has read Bill Libby's excellent bio of thirty years ago and followed West's career with even moderate interest in newspapers and periodicals.
I felt the author got lost in the West Virginia roots he shares with his subject (and, tellingly, with Tim Rutten), then ran out of time, steam or both before his deadline. After the slow opening, the whole book feels rushed: as another reviewer noted, it is sloppily edited, with typos, errors, narrative confusion, and inconsistencies in abundance.
Clearly, judging by the overwhelmingly positive reviews here, your mileage may vary.
Should be on every basketball fan's "must read" list May 8, 2010
Barry Sparks (York, PA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Biographer Roland Lazenby describes Los Angeles Lakers great Jerry West as "the most influential figure in the history of American basketball." Lazenby takes on the task of trying to explain the "mystery that is Jerry West."
Lazenby was told that to understand West, he needed to understand West Virginia, where West was born and raised and played for the University of West Virginia. Lazenby spends the first 75 pages, detailing the history of West Virginia, exploring West's ancestry and interviewing many of his family members, relatives and boyhood friends. While this does help to explain West, I'm afraid it's about 50 pages too long for many readers.
But, by the time you finish this nearly 400-page biography, you'll have completely forgotten about the book's slow start.
Lazenby achieves his goal of explaining the mystery of Jerry West. Jerry's mother was a perfectionist, who was a loner and shy. Jerry, who had little relationship with his abusive father, took after his mother. He was also deeply affected by the death of his older brother in the Korean War.
West was never able to enjoy his accomplishments. Nothing he ever did was good enough. Instead, he settled for disappointment, harsh criticism or perceived slights by others. He would go through long periods of depression when he wasn't playing well. He was extremely competitive, had more heart than any other player, obsessed with winning and driven to greatness. He was humble, shy and reserved.
Lazenby says West's rise to the top of basketball was "absolutely improbable." West was physically frail through high school, college and much of his NBA career. As an NBA rookie he was 6-foot-3 and 172 pounds. Coach Bill Sharman called West, known as Mr. Clutch, "the tallest 6-foot-3 player ever." Sharman also felt West was "probably the greatest defensive guard ever."
Lazenby gives a good account of West's high school and college basketball careers, particularly the rivalry between West and Oscar Robertson of the University of Cincinnati to be considered the best college player in the nation. The book is equally divided between West's pre-NBA years and NBA career.
West's heroics and heartbreaks in the NBA, losing year after year to the Boston Celtics for the championship, are well chronicled. West and the Lakers finally won a championship in 1972, beating the New York Knicks. Lazenby points out that if West had scored a total of 10 more points in five games, he would have had an NCAA title and four NBA titles.
After his playing days, West served three unhappy years as the Lakers coach and then became their successful general manager.
This is an insightful biography about one of the NBA's greatest players ever. It should be on every basketball fan's "must-read" list.
A "Clutch" writing April 14, 2010
Jerry Lee (Cambria, CA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
The best sports biography I ever read from the historical periods leading up to Jerrys birth to the present day. I could almost hear Chick Hearn describing the activities of the court action moving from "left to right on your radio dial".
Jerry Lee (age 72)
 OBNOXIOUS EDITING/WRITING HABIT RESURFACES April 11, 2010
therealkenlo (California)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is the second book I've bought by Mr Lazenby. I'll have to look again who his editors are, but in both books there are several instances where sentences, paragraphs, even a series of pages are repeated VERBATIM from another section in the book. This is not an instance of an author telling an anecdote two different ways, in two different places in the book. It is an instance of someone copying and pasting the same text and inserting it later in the book as filler to make the book appear larger. This gets obnoxious because you find yourself stumbling across the same 3-5 pages you read 60 pages ago, and having to flip through the next 3-5 pages wondering where the narrative picks back up with new material. I don't know why an author and publisher would allow this to occur. It was something that happened frequently in Lazenby's book on Kobe, and I just came across the first few instances of it in the West book, but like a sucker, it's the topic of his books that reel me in--not the writing or editing. Most of us who consider books like this are so interested in the Lakers that we don't really care how well written the books are...... Anyways, just thought you should know.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
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