Ranking Jerry West's Top 10 Moves as NBA Executive
Jerry West, a true legend of the game of basketball, died at the age of 86 on Wednesday.
People in and around the NBA have understandably been praising him, and much of the adulation is in relation to his playing career.
The man who's the silhouette on the NBA logo was indeed one of the greatest guards in the league's history, but he's also among the very best executives the game has ever seen.
In the front offices of the Los Angeles Lakers, Memphis Grizzlies, Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Clippers, he's made or influenced some of the most important behind-the-scenes decisions ever.
Below, you'll find his top 10 front-office moves, but bear in mind that this list is open for debate. When a front-office career spans nearly half a century, it's hard to fit everything in.
The two-time NBA Executive of the Year drafted Eddie Jones, signed Ron Harper, drafted Kyle Lowry at the end of the first round, drafted Nick Van Exel midway through the second round and hired Hubie Brown to coach the Grizzlies.
And those moves are among the many hits that didn't make the cut.
West is undoubtedly one of the best team architects we've ever seen, and the moves below prove it.
10. Signing Rick Fox
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In 1997, West signed a relatively unknown free agent coming off the best season of his career. Rick Fox had just averaged 15.4 points and 3.8 assists for the Boston Celtics.
From that summer through the end of his career in 2004, Fox became one of the best and most important role players L.A. ever had.
From the start of his Lakers stint through the end of the three-peat, he played in 79 playoff games and started 49, averaging 8.1 points, 3.8 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 1.0 steals and shooting 35.7 percent from deep.
His multi-positional defense and timely outside shooting were crucial for making the two-man game between Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal completely unstoppable.
9. Drafted A.C. Green
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A role player who won multiple championships with the Lakers, A.C. Green was the 23rd overall pick for L.A. in the 1985 draft.
As a starter for the title-winning teams in 1987 and 1988, Green averaged 10.6 points and 7.5 rebounds in those two postseasons.
After a detour through Phoenix and Dallas, he returned to the Lakers for the 1999-00 season, where he started 105 regular and postseason games and collected his third championship ring.
8. Traded for Robert Horry
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Stars are the most important pieces in team-building (and West acquired plenty of those), but rosters need more than just those foundational blocks. Mortar, accents and framing are all crucial. And Robert Horry was exactly that kind of gap-filler.
In 1997, West traded Cedric Ceballos and Rumeal Robinson for Horry, who went on to win three rings for the Lakers as part of the three-peat squad that secured the titles in 2000, 2001 and 2002.
And he was responsible for one of the most legendary moments in that era of Lakers history:
Over seven postseasons with L.A., Horry averaged 7.2 points, 6.1 rebounds, 2.5 assists, 1.2 steals and 0.9 blocks in 29.5 minutes, but his impact went far beyond basic numbers.
Over the same playoff stretch, the Lakers were plus-6.5 points per 100 possessions with Horry on the floor and plus-0.3 when he was off.
7. Drafted Vlade Divac
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Vlade Divac never won a championship with the Lakers, but the 26th pick of the 1989 draft was good enough to be traded for someone who did (more on that later), and his own contributions to L.A. were nothing to sneeze at.
Divac came directly to the NBA from an overseas program, long before that was the norm.
From that summer through 1996, Divac played in 51 playoff games (starting 43) and averaged 12.8 points, 7.0 rebounds, 2.2 assists, 1.7 blocks and 1.1 steals.
His playmaking from the 5 spot blazed a trail for future big men like Marc Gasol and Nikola Jokić.
6. Drafted Derek Fisher
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1996 was a huge year for West and the Lakers (more on that later). And in one of the less heralded moves of that offseason, West picked a steady-handed, four-year college point guard from Little Rock with the 24th pick of the draft.
Derek Fisher had averaged 12.4 points and 4.2 assists while shooting 38.0 percent from deep for the Trojans. And though it took him some time to become a fixture in the rotation, he eventually started providing similar contributions to the Lakers.
Fisher was the ideal point guard next to Kobe Bryant. He didn't need the ball in his hands a ton. He was a reliable catch-and-shoot threat. And he played stout defense.
Fisher won five titles with Kobe and the Lakers. And to this day, he's second all-time in total games played in the postseason.
5. Drafted James Worthy
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L.A. already had Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1982. It would've been set for the rest of the decade, with or without the No. 1 pick.
But thanks to a 1980 trade with the Cleveland Cavaliers, the powerhouse Lakers had the top pick that summer, and they landed a perfect No. 3 along those two all-time superstars.
James Worthy won three championships with L.A. from 1985 through 1988. And for his entire postseason career, he averaged 21.1 points, 5.2 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 1.2 steals.
In 2003, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
4. Signing Kawhi Leonard
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In the summer of 2017, West joined the Los Angeles Clippers. Two years later, West convinced recently crowned Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard to leave the Toronto Raptors and come home.
The same offseason, he traded for Paul George.
Just over a year after the last vestiges of Lob City, the Clippers were suddenly a contender again.
And though untimely injuries to Leonard and George have certainly limited the team's ceiling since they joined, the Clippers' 2021 conference finals appearance is the only one in franchise history.
3. Signing Shaquille O'Neal
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In one of the most consequential free-agent signings in NBA history, Shaq joined the Lakers in 1996 as the cornerstone of what would soon become a dynasty.
Thanks in large part to his tenure with L.A., O'Neal would eventually become one of the 10 greatest players in NBA history.
He won an MVP and three Finals MVPs with the Lakers. And during his eight postseasons there, he averaged 27.7 points, 13.4 rebounds, 3.0 assists and 2.5 blocks.
In those same playoffs, the Lakers were plus-6.3 points per 100 possessions with Shaq on the floor and minus-10.9 when he was off.
2. Trading Vlade Divac for Kobe Bryant
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As noted before, Divac was one of West's bigger successes as a front-office executive. But in 1996, he made a daring move to trade him for a prep-to-pro prospect taken with the 13th pick of the draft.
That player, of course, was Kobe Bryant, who went on to become a top 10-20 player in league history and perhaps the most beloved Laker of all time.
As Shaq's No. 2 from 1997 through 2004, Kobe averaged 22.6 points and 4.4 assists in the playoffs. Together, the duo won three straight titles and looked like perhaps the most unstoppable one-two punch the NBA had ever seen.
And yet, Kobe wasn't done. In the post-Shaq portion of his career, he played another 101 playoff games and averaged 29.2 points and 5.1 assists in those contests. In 2009 and 2010, he won championships to bring his ring count to five.
1. Assembling the Superteam Warriors
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We're going to cheat and just package West's entire Golden State Warriors tenure into this final slide. He was only in the front office for six years (from 2011 to 2017), but he changed the course of NBA history in that brief period of time.
"West's influence turned the Warriors from a league laughingstock to the league's lodestar," Dieter Kurtenbach wrote for the Mercury News. "His unwavering competitiveness — impossible to miss as a player — crept into every part of the organization as an executive."
In his first two drafts with Golden State, the team picked Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. In 2013, the Warriors traded for Andre Iguodala. The next summer, 2014, they hired Steve Kerr to coach. That same year, he famously threatened to resign if an oft-rumored Kevin Love-for-Klay deal went through.
And in 2016, West helped convince one of the greatest players of all time, Kevin Durant, to join an already-established core that had just won 73 games in the prior regular season.
The 2016-17 Warriors, Durant's first Golden State team, has the fourth-highest single-season point differential in NBA history and went 16-1 in the playoffs.
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