Game 80: Jerry West - Old Fashioned Lemonade

When I learned the news of Kobe Bryant’s death on Sunday January 25, 2020, I first thought about Shaq. During my lifetime, the two become inextricably linked for their on-court partnership, their off-court tabloid feud, and their touching reconciliation. I pictured the big man sobbing uncontrollably, his entire house coming loose off its foundation with every agonizing wail, until he was surrounded by nothing but dust and memories. 

And then I thought of Jerry West. If Shaq was the older brother that Kobe never had, then West was the father Kobe wanted, especially after he and his parents stopped speaking. I didn’t have to wonder very long about how West, the man who orchestrated Kobe’s trade to the Lakers, was holding up. Within hours of his death, West had called into CBS 2 to speak with Jim Hill. He sounded like a broken man. In the days that followed, West did heartbreaking interviews with ABC News and Extra, then joined Shaq on NBA on TNT’s memorial, where he found himself unable to speak for 30 seconds. He gathered his thoughts, then started weeping again. Kobe wasn’t just the heralded 17 year old high school star who West fought to put in purple and gold. West thought of him as a son.

Jerry West’s autobiography West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life, is as much a book about basketball as it is with his lifelong battle with depression. In Game 57, I touched on West’s upbringing in dirt poor West Virginia. His father was a violent abuser, his beloved brother died in South Korea, and his mother was irreparably broken after the death of her oldest child. It was in this environment, one where “I love you” was never said, that West learned to bottle his emotions, letting them fester inside until showing affection became impossible. “Three goddamn words,” he wrote in West by West. “And I struggle like hell with them”

We don’t know whether clinical depression is genetic, environmental, or a combination, but for West it was clearly a noxious mixture. Besides his mother, who spent her final decades in a grieving stupor she could not shake, all three of his sisters also suffered from depression. West never had a chance. When he left for college, he met Willie Akers, his best friend who “was nearly everything [he] wasn’t: happy, bubbly, lovable, easy, mellow.” He envied Willie for the ease in which he floated through life and social situations. I can relate. I silently begrudge friends of mine who either lack the darkness or are much better at keeping it from showing.  I do not have depression. I often feel blue, and there have been long stretches -- months, even years -- where I have felt hopelessly sad. But I am grateful every day that I don’t suffer on a daily basis from that suffocating blanket that envelops me on my worst days. 

As the star player on the Lakers, West was often viewed as a tragic figure. His Laker teams lost to the Boston Celtics six times in the NBA Finals, almost always in heartbreaking fashion. West won the Finals MVP Award in 1969, the only time it’s gone to a losing player, and he won a free car as his reward. The car was a brand new Celtic green Dodge Charger. “The summer that followed,” he wrote, “Was one of the worst summers of my life. I was lost, and I was depressed. Wherever I went, I had a hard time making eye contact with people.” West picked up basketball as a way to please his distant parents and to soothe the demons inside his own head. But now basketball was adding to his misery, compounded with each loss to Bill Russell and Red Auerbach.

West finally won a championship in 1972, but he found that it did nothing to stop his depression from intensifying.  While separating from his first wife, he met Karen Bua, who described him on their first date as the “saddest man she had ever met.” It’s not an exaggeration to write that without Karen, West might not be here today. With her encouragement, he became coach of Lakers -- a job he regrets due to how harsh he was on his players -- and later, a scout-turned-General Manager. In this 2nd act of his life, West finally beat the Celtics in the NBA Finals in 1985. But West wasn’t with the team. The scars from decades past were so deep, he was physically unable to get on a plane to Boston.

It wouldn’t be the only time West’s depression barred him from being present around others. West didn’t attend the NBA’s 50 Best Players ceremony in 1997. He skipped Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference Finals, missing Kobe’s iconic alley-oop to Shaq in person. When he retired from the Lakers in 2000, he didn’t show up to the press conference and instead took out an ad in the L.A. Times to express his gratitude to Laker fans. West suffered a ludicrous amount of physical injuries during his playing career, but it paled in comparison to his emotional pain. “I don’t let too many people get close to me, even though I try to be cordial to everyone,” he wrote. “I don’t seem to be capable of having a lot of friends in my life, and even for those who are, I am guarded with them. If I feel someone getting too close, I back up and go inward, probably out of fear, fear to expose myself and show some of my real feelings.”

West tried therapy, he told HBO, but says he now takes Prozac and tries to handle it on a day-by-day basis himself. Writing West by West was clearly a huge part of that process. The book even includes a quote by Magic Johnson, who says “I am glad Jerry is doing this book. He needs therapy and I have to believe that doing this is good therapy, that it could really help him.” But a therapist might’ve helped him dig deeper into his feelings, especially those around his departure from the Lakers. In West by West, he writes very unfavorably about Jerry Buss coddling new coach Phil Jackson. In April 1999, two months before Jackson was hired, Karen West wrote a secret letter to owner Jerry Buss about the “very tormented individual” she called her husband. West was being more self-destructive than usual and Karen feared what he would do if Buss didn’t sit down with him to discuss an extension. Buss never responded to the letter. 14 months later, the Lakers and Phil Jackson were champions again but West had had enough of the organization he devoted his life to since 1960. He wanted to “vanish into thin air” after the 2000 title run, so he quit. 

In May of this year, Hall of Fame Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan passed away. Sloan and West were rivals on and off the court for decades, but they held a deep respect for each other. At 78, Sloan’s death wasn’t shocking like Kobe’s death, but West still had his own mortality on his mind when asked by The Athletic for thoughts on the passing of his rival and friend. “You always say how do you want people to remember you, and I say, nope. I’d just as soon they don’t even announce when I pass away. I’m different. I hate publicity, I hate notoriety.” That won’t happen when Jerry West dies. He is one of the greatest players of all time, one of the rare ‘60s players whose game -- which Kobe modeled his after -- could stand up in the modern NBA. He built not one, but two Lakers dynasties as a general manager. He is literally the NBA logo. But when West dies, his wish to be forgotten won’t come true. You can hate yourself, but you can’t force others to stop loving you.

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Old Fashioned Lemonade

Juice of 6 lemons

4 cups water

¾ cup sugar, or to taste

1 lemon, sliced

In sauce pan, combine water and sugar, heat to melt sugar. Add lemon juice and stir. Remove from heat to cool; add lemon slices; refrigerate. Serve over ice.

Having an easy recipe for game #80 after so many hours spent in the kitchen for Goldstein and Gasol was just what I needed. Three of the six recipes I prepared by Jerry and his wife Karen were drinks: Lemonade, sangria, and eggnog. Two of them were desserts; one, an extravagant cheesecake and the other, a simple apple saute. The other was potato skins. Considering the abysmal hit/miss ratio for the 82 things I cooked for this project, West going 5 for 6 (the potato skins were mediocre) in this cookbook is spectacular. It’s just like the old days: He won the Finals MVP even though he played for the losing team.