On the phone with Jerry West is when the NBA universe opened up

When you were lucky enough to get on the phone with Jerry West and get him in the right mood, sometimes it was like tapping into the NBA secret mainframe. You felt electrified. You were enlightened. You were frightened sometimes. You never felt more attuned to life as it really happened in this league. You often felt: Hey, am I really supposed to be hearing this?

You saw where the power was. You sensed the league’s true history and nervous future. You felt everything bounce and tremble when big things were about to occur, and Jerry was almost always involved when the biggest things were dawning.

I can’t fully describe what it was like talking with Jerry regularly from the end of his Los Angeles Lakers tenure through his six years in the Golden State Warriors’ front office to just a few years ago other than to say: Nobody ever cussed me out more than Jerry did on those long phone calls, and occasionally in person, and nobody ever made me want to keep getting cussed out. It was a source of pride that I shared with a few others — Hey, we get yelled at by Jerry and you don’t!

I’ll never forget Mitch Kupchak’s smile when I exited Jerry’s office in the small suite the two men shared at the Lakers’ Forum headquarters in the old days. I’d just gotten barbecued over something. I’d sort of held my own. In the end, Jerry and I were, as usual, on solid terms. Then I walked out and Mitch, then the general manager, shared the understanding that we keep today. Life with Jerry was worth all of the heat and 100 times more.

Bob Myers, when he was the Warriors’ general manager and working with Jerry, always used to joke with me that I didn’t need to talk to anybody else, Jerry would just tell me everything, anyway. Which wasn’t true, of course, but the gist was accurate enough: A true connection to Jerry West meant that you were connected to everything, because he was connected to everything.

And Jerry was such a significant figure — so towering that even commissioners didn’t dare challenge him, so elemental that LeBron James, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan, among many other immortals, all issued touching tributes hours after West’s death was announced Wednesday morning — that he could do and say what he wanted to, anyway. I mean, he was The Logo, what was anybody going to do about it?

At times it felt like West acted almost as a co-commissioner, or at least a very loud counterweight to anything David Stern and then Adam Silver contemplated and did.

One of the very first conversations I ever had with Jerry — I remember it clearly, I called him from a pay phone at UCLA, where NBA players were getting pickup games in during the lockout — and out of nowhere I suddenly got the most profane, clearest, unedited summation of the negotiations, the motivations and Stern’s actions I could ever want. (I hadn’t asked.)

Maybe most importantly: Because you were hearing it from such an important figure who was so revealing and so honest about his own faults and misgivings, when you talked with Jerry, you were given ultra-perception of why the league operated the way it did, why it sometimes failed, why it succeeded and what the internal ethical and moral standards really were. Not the biblical or CBA standards. The real ones. What it meant to do it the right way, sometimes in the darkness, sometimes in the light, only accountable to each person’s own conscience.

And though he would never say it this way, I think a lot of the NBA’s true powerbrokers would agree: You were also accountable, in some way, to Jerry West. How can that ever be replaced now that he’s gone? It can’t.

I don’t think Warriors owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber hired West strictly to be judged by him, but that’s sort of what happened over those amazing and at times tense six years. Timid souls do not hire somebody like West — with all those championships and all that personality —and Lacob and Guber sure aren’t timid.

Guber famously described the hiring as the Warriors’ “cover of darkness,” because if you have West on your team, nobody was ever going to challenge your grander logic or your commitment to winning. The personnel decisions weren’t coming directly from West, but his voice was heard. And his voice was never soft.

Yes, West pushed for the Monta Ellis/Andrew Bogut trade, which was his first great Warriors moment. Yes, he urged them to draft Klay Thompson in 2011. I spoke to Jerry soon after he watched Klay work out that summer, and all Jerry told me was that he’d found the guy the Warriors had to draft. He wouldn’t say who it was, but a few calls to other sources locked that up. The Warriors, if it was up to West, were going to take Klay. That worked out fairly well.

Yes, West threatened to quit if the Warriors traded Klay for Kevin Love before the 2014-15 season (pretty important time in Warriors history!), though that trade was actually never really close to consummation. Yes, the rest of the league heard about West’s dismay over Lacob and others in the front office even considering this. But the very important part of this was that the trade did not happen and the Warriors’ front office was only stronger for having the discussion and coming to the unified belief that their team was good enough as it was. That was a test. The Warriors passed it. Yes, Jerry might’ve threatened to quit a few other times over much lesser players, but that was all part of the package with him.

Jerry West talks with Klay Thompson in 2012. Two years later, West threatened to quit when the Warriors considered trading the emerging star. (Rocky Widner / NBAE via Getty Images)

And yes, one of the last calls Kevin Durant took as he was about to make his free-agent decision in July 2016 was from West, making a final, authoritative pitch for the Warriors. What West told him: Do what makes you happy, but you will be your best basketball self on this team alongside Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Klay, and coached by Steve Kerr.

I think Durant had pretty much already decided to sign with the Warriors by that point, though the pull back to Oklahoma City remained strong. I’ve never argued that West’s call was the main reason Durant signed with the Warriors, but just that Durant wanted to speak to West in that moment, while the rest of the league twitched in anticipation of this announcement, was immensely important.

West understood that, too. He understood his power.

I’ll never forget when I bumped into West at the Forum Club during a particularly perilous time before Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant started winning championships. I’d been requesting an interview with West, and for a rare time he wasn’t talking. But I saw Jerry and he immediately snapped off an all-time line: “Blame me, that’s what you do best.”

I happened to be having lunch with PR guy John Black and then-Los Angeles Daily News beat writer Howard Beck at the time. I asked John if that was on the record and he said yes. Just blame me. Jerry was big enough to take it.

There just was a gallantry to this man. There was a broadness. There was a manifest destiny to West, who somehow was 100 percent West Virginia and also 100 percent Los Angeles and 100 percent NBA institution and 100 percent rebel. All at once. Always in those perfectly tailored suits and always representing everything real and regal about this league.

I’ve told this story often, and I’ll tell it again now, because it’s the perfect distillation of what a phone relationship with Jerry was really like.

It was 7 a.m., the morning after the 1999 draft, when I knew Jerry wasn’t happy with me. I woke up early because I suspected I might get a call. And …

“Tim, this is Jerry West.”

Hi, Jerry, how are you?

“Not very good.”

Why?

“Because you’re the worst m-f-er I ever dealt with in 44 years.”

I had to laugh. Literally told him: Worst in 44 years? That’s pretty good! Jerry was mad because I’d asked him some tough questions about a possible trade of Glen Rice the night before. But he was calling from his car, driving around the L.A. ocean-side hills and the connection cut out multiple times. Yes, he kept calling me back, and yes, each time he’d say, “Hi, this is Jerry West.” And then he’d yell some more.

Eventually, Jerry more than calmed down. He basically confirmed everything I suspected and definitely everything I’d written and just said he wished I hadn’t asked about it. Then as he wound down, his wrap-up:

“It was good talking to you and have a nice day.”

Perfection. Just perfection.

Jerry West was somehow 100 percent West Virginia and also 100 percent L.A. and 100 percent NBA institution and 100 percent rebel. All at once. (Stephen Dunn / Getty Images)

One of my last long conversations with West while he was with the Warriors happened because Jerry wasn’t happy that the Warriors, in his mind, weren’t properly rewarding Myers, whom he thought needed a contract befitting one of the best executives in the league. A few months later, the Warriors announced a new deal for Myers and a promotion to team president. West exited the franchise soon after that.

Why did he leave the Warriors? There certainly was some fidgeting with Lacob about West’s next contract. Jerry also wanted to be full-time back in Los Angeles, and Clippers owner Steve Ballmer solved both of those problems by offering West a giant deal. Jerry told me he never wanted to depart the Warriors, but I think he also knew that Myers had the thing totally under control, and 2017 was as good a time as any to exit.

“Forget the amount of games that they’ve won,” West told me in August 2017, months after he’d left the Warriors. “Forget that. The thing that’s made it special are the players. And my gosh, some of the owners that I’ve gotten to know there; you couldn’t have a bunch of people like that by stroke of good fortune. To watch Bob grow as a general manager, watch the team; you don’t have a chance to see those things happen very often, particularly when you’re in the twilight of your life.”

I read that back early this morning, right after I saw the news of Jerry’s passing. And that last sentence, knowing how much Jerry pondered death and how much he mourned the losses of friends and peers like Kobe Bryant, Jerry Buss and Elgin Baylor, really hits hard right now. But like a lot of people, I’m going to remember all those conversations and all those times I felt like I was hardwired into the soul of a sport, just because I was talking to one man. And I know none of us are ever getting that back.

(Top photo of Jerry West in 2019, during his time with the Clippers: Brian Rothmuller / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)