West Virginia legend Jerry West commented this week on the state of competitiveness in the National Basketball Association. (Photo Provided by WVU Athletics)
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Some mornings you wake up and know there’s a column out there that has to be written.
You don’t know what it is, but it’s floating around out there somewhere.
On this day, as the West Virginia basketball situation continues to root around in the muck and mire of a situation that has become an embarrassment to all involved, you wait for it to hit you.
You know it will, the column that fits, but you don’t know when.
As I look at the clock it is a tick away from 1 p.m., and as I browse through George Whitman’s West Virginia Basketball Group page on Facebook, there is a familiar face that pops up.
It’s a man in a white shirt, no tie, collar open, with a microphone in his hand.
It’s Jerry West and he’s speaking on the competitiveness of basketball in the NBA.
“The word ‘dog’ comes up a lot … well, I was a wolf. … I used to eat dogs.”
We’re not talking Joey Chestnut kind of ‘dogs,” although West Virginians can wolf down their hot dogs as well as anyone.
We’re talking about dogs … and the style of basketball competitor Jerry West used to be when he was playing and about what is expected from the program that grew out his, Rod Hundley’s and Rod Thorn’s play in another era.
Right now, West Virginia basketball finds itself adrift on an out of control raft on one of the whitewater rivers running through the hills and valleys of wild and wonderful West Virginia.
Maybe Jerry West can get things back on track. He knows what West Virginia basketball is supposed to be, and it’s about transfers and portals; it’s not about lawsuits and court cases.
We had been willing to make it Bob Huggins’ game, and it was fun while it lasted. But in the end, it’s all about Jerry West, and his words from the past, we figured, could bring us back to where we were meant to be.
So, we went to Google to look up the words and wisdom of Jerry West.
He wouldn’t let us down. Never has.
Oh, he didn’t bring home an NCAA championship but he took it as far as its ever gone, and it took him a while, but he finally got himself an NBA championship ring, all the while being faithful to his sport, to his school, to his state.
First quote we came across on BrainyQuote.com’s list of the Top 10 Jerry West quotes could have stood alone if we’d wanted it to.
“I’m still very much a West Virginia boy. I haven’t forgotten my roots, because that’s really who I am,” it read.
It’s time for all of us to think about that one for a moment, even us born-in-New York City, grown-up-in-New Jersey and schooled-in-Missouri West Virginians.
West Virginia is not only a state but a state of mind, and the Bob Huggins situation or some bad football teams or troubles on the basketball court can’t change that or take that away from us all.
No one says it’s heaven here. Only “almost heaven” and it comes, yes, from the rolling hills and wonderful vistas. But it comes from the people even more, hard working people; nature-loving people who take pride in what it takes to get where they’re going rather than in the pride of being where others may never even think they may be.
Jerry West has addressed it all in a long and fruitful life that grew out of humble and troubling beginnings.
“I’ve seen a lot in my life,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of winning. I’ve seen a lot of testing times.”
While he wasn’t speaking of today’s times in West Virginia particularly, what he was saying fits.
“I think when you’re tested, you really find out what you’re made of, OK?”
And that is what this is all about today.
To Jerry West, it always has been about the challenge. That goes back to the days when he was young in West Virginia, being outside shooting hoops or fishing. One of his chronicled quotes offers up this:
“I’d go fishing and always pretend I would catch the biggest fish,” BrainyQuotes.com printed. “I’d stay out there for hours after everybody else left until I caught something. When I shot baskets, I was always the coach and star player and always made the winning shot.”
He was driven, just as this state is driven and as this athletic situation WVU now faces must drive its players and coaches.
“Fear of failure, it’s the greatest motivational tool,” West has said. “It drives me and drives me and drives me.”
West always believed that on the basketball court, in a game or practice, you were all in, just as the coal miner who went down into the Earth had to make every day his day.
“You can’t get much done in life if you only work on days when you’re good,” he once said.
Right now, there aren’t many feel-good days for fans or coaches or players, but that, West believes, should only push them harder so they can go further.
He believes the fans play a role, too. An important role.
“It’s discouraging for me to come out there to watch the lack of fan support for a good team,” he admitted.
The thing is, West believes it’s on the fans and the athletes who need to take the high road.
“Anything you can do to help someone, I just think it’s so important because there’s a lot of kids that look up to athletes of all sizes and shapes in a lot of different fields, not necessarily in the basketball field,” he once noted. “They get involved emotionally with those people because there’s something about certain athletes that people rally around.”
So, there you go, once again, Jerry West has come to the rescue and didn’t even know it, just his very existence, his words, offer a lift to West Virginians who are badly in need of it right now.
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July 11, 2023 at 12:29PM
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