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Everyone who knows a bit about sports knows that Jerry West is the silhouette that’s seen in the NBA’s logo. The NBA, however, has never officially acknowledged as much.
There have been many suggested reasons over the years attempting to explain why the NBA has never confirmed that Jerry West is the logo, such as West being a white player is a predominantly Black league or the potential that he’d ask for residuals, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Alan Siegel — the man who designed the logo and has admitted that it’s based on Jerry West — has a theory of his own, reasoning that the NBA wanted the logo to be ubiquitous and not singular.
“They want to institutionalize it rather than individualize it,” he told the LA Times in 2010. “It’s become such a ubiquitous, classic symbol and focal point of their identity and their licensing program that they don’t necessarily want to identify it with one player.”
To his credit, West never wanted to be acknowledged as “The Logo,” telling ESPN a few years back that he wish word had never gotten out that he was the inspiration.
“I wish that it had never gotten out that I’m the logo. I really do. I’ve said it more than once, and it’s flattering if that’s me — and I know it is me — but it is flattering,” West told Rachel Nichols on ESPN’s The Jump in 2017.
“But to me, I played in a time when they first started to try to market the league. There were five people that they were going to consider, and I didn’t find out about it until [Kennedy] told me about it. … Again, it’s flattering, but if I were the NBA, I would be embarrassed about it. I really would.”
West passed away at the age 86 years old on Wednesday, June 12. While former NBA commissioner David Stern went to his grave without admitting that West was the logo, in 2021, current NBA commish Adam Silver said: “While it’s never been officially declared that the logo is Jerry West… it sure looks a lot like him.”
During his NBA career, West spent 14 years with the Los Angeles Lakers as a player and three years as head coach.
West was then the general manager of the Lakers from 1979 to 2000, where he won six champions as an exec and was responsible for bringing Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal to the organization.
After departing from the Lakers in the year 2000, West then became the general manager of the Memphis Grizzlies, where he worked until 2007. In the latter years of his career, West was an executive board member and consultant for both the Los Angeles Clippers and Golden State Warriors.