Jerry West Said in 2019 He Wished He 'Never Played or Worked for' Lakers amid Feud

Late Basketball Hall of Famer Jerry West once expressed regret about the decades he spent as a player, coach and executive for the Los Angeles Lakers.

"I almost wish that I had never played or worked for them," West told ESPN in 2019, Baxter Holmes reported for the network.

West, who died in June at age 86, recorded more than 25,000 points and won the 1972 NBA title with the Lakers as a player.

He then returned to the franchise as a coach who guided the team on three playoff runs and an executive who built the Showtime dynasty that brought five rings to Los Angeles in the 1980s.

Despite his three admissions to the Hall of Fame for his work with the Lakers, West was public about the souring of his relationship with the organization later in his life, which he described to The Athletic's Sam Amick in 2022 as "horrible."

"One disappointing thing (about my career) is that my relationship with the Lakers is horrible," West said. "I still don't know why. And at the end of the day, when I look back, I say, 'Well, maybe I should have played somewhere else instead of with the Lakers, where someone would have at least appreciated how much you give, how much you cared.'"

In interviews that were previously unpublished by ESPN, per Holmes, West expanded on the fallout of his strained relationship with Lakers leadership, dating back at least 25 years.

At the end of the 1998-99 season, he told former Lakers owner Jerry Buss that the team should hire Phil Jackson as head coach over then-interim head coach Kurt Rambis, according to Holmes.

That decision "sparked friction" within the organization, which was "compounded" by the relationship between Jackson and Jeanie Buss, Jerry's daughter and current team owner, Holmes wrote. Jackson and Buss were later engaged for four years.

West departed from the Lakers in 2000, but he later told Lance Pugmire in a Q&A for The Los Angeles Times that he wished he had left sooner after Jackson was hired in 1999.

"I told Jerry Buss to hire him," West said. "The only thing I cared about was winning, but you want a relationship with your coach. There was no relationship... I felt underappreciated by leadership, and leadership is ownership."

But even after his split from the team at the turn of the century, after which West worked with the Memphis Grizzlies, Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Clippers, he was still open about his hope to reunite with his former organization.

According to Holmes, West "hoped the Lakers would call" after firing former vice president of basketball ops Jim Buss and former general manager Mitch Kupchak in 2017. The Lakers instead hired Rob Pelinka.

West told ESPN the fallout of his split with the L.A. organization went further than him being slighted for an open role with the team.

The Lakers parted ways with West's son, Ryan, who was serving as director of player personnel in his 10th year with the organization, in July 2019. ESPN's Ramona Shelburne reported at the time that the Lakers and Ryan West "mutually agreed he'd reached a ceiling [with] the team in the role he'd been in."

Holmes wrote that West instead believed his son was fired as part of "collateral damage" from his broken relationship with the franchise.

"They let him go because of me," he said soon after his son was fired, per Holmes.

That October, before the opening of the 2019-20 season, West then learned the Lakers had cancelled his season tickets, according to Holmes.

West told ESPN he had been the recipient of four season tickets every season since he was promised the gift in 2000 by the late Jerry Buss.

"That's about as low as you can go," West told ESPN about the season tickets being cancelled.

Despite the strained relationship between West and the Lakers' leadership, his dominance as a player, his role in drafting Kobe Bryant and seven titles he won as part of the organization means his legacy will live on in Los Angeles. That will start during the team's Oct. 22 opener to the 2024-25 campaign, during which players will debut the No. 44 bands to be worn on their jerseys in West's honor this season.