This season, the Los Angeles Lakers will commemorate the life of the famous player and executive who spent decades with the team by wearing a No. 44 patch on their jerseys in his honor.
Regretfully, Jerry West did not pass away amicably with the group. West had a notable feud with Lakers owner Jeanie Buss in the years following his departure from the team as an executive in 2000. Their disagreements are widely known; among other things, he was angered when the Lakers denied his family season tickets, and Buss excluded him from his ranking of the top five Lakers players of all time.
As the final stop in his professional career in 2017, West hoped to rejoin the Lakers organization, but they didn’t even consider it, and he ended up joining the L.A. Clippers as a consultant.
As all of this was happening, Ryan West, Jerry’s son, was employed by the Lakers as their director of player personnel. However, Ryan reportedly left the Lakers organization in a mutual choice shortly after Jerry accepted the position with the Clippers because there was no longer any opportunity for advancement. Ryan is currently employed for the Detroit Pistons.
According to ESPN’s Baxter Holmes, Jerry West believes the Lakers fired Ryan because of his conflict with the team: “They let him go because of me,” “It’s like a soap opera,”. “There is fallout, which is hurtful. Ryan, to me, it looks like he paid the price for all this pettiness.”
With West no longer with the team, it’s a sad situation for one of the greatest franchise players of all time and his family. In the forthcoming season, hopefully, the Lakers will pay due respect to West and his legacy, and perhaps even patch things up with Ryan and his family.
