The genius of Jerry West: How "The Logo" transformed the Grizzlies organization
The genius of Jerry West: How "The Logo" transformed the Grizzlies organization
Jerry West will be inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame this weekend as a front office executive. One of the proudest times of his illustrious legacy: laying a foundation for the Memphis Grizzlies.
Jerry West will be inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame this October for his career as a NBA executive. His highlights of his storied career include nine NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers between 1980 and 2001, and with the Golden State Warriors as a consultant between 2015-2017. He orchestrated dynasties with two of the best duos the game will ever see with Kareem Abdul-Jabaar and Magic Johnson in the 1980’s, and Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.
If you asked “The Logo” towards the end of his life about the most rewarding time of his career, it was his stint as the President of Basketball Operations of the Memphis Grizzlies.
“Just how much fun it was, how electric the city was,” his son, Ryan West said of his father’s tenure. “There really was no life to the organization, and now it was the talk of the town. To see the success they’ve had, the fanfare they have, people really rally around that team, and it was something he was just so proud to be a part of.”
People remember Jerry West’s time as the Grizzlies President of Basketball Operations for the wrong reasons. During his time, the Grizzlies were 0-12 in the postseason. They ran into a postseason gauntlet from 2004-06 — the defending champion San Antonio Spurs, a Phoenix Suns squad that spent all of the 2004-05 campaign as the presumable favorite, and a 60-win Dallas Mavericks team that was the 4th seed because of the old playoff realignment where all three division winners held the top-3 seeds.
In addition, two moves surround the perception of West’s run in Memphis, though it’s far from reality. One of them is the Pau Gasol trade to the Los Angeles Lakers. West was not a member of either organization at the time of the trade, as he had retired from the Grizzlies GM job before the 2007-08 season. The second one was more of a non-move: not convincing Kobe Bryant to come to Memphis.
Despite an appearance from Paul George’s podcast “Podcast P” where West talked about Kobe Bryant nearly coming to Memphis, the West family debunked it. In 2003 free agency, Bryant was between three teams — the Los Angeles Lakers, the Los Angeles Clippers, and the Chicago Bulls. He took a meeting with Jerry West ahead of his decision for advice on his decision, as he saw The Logo as a mentor and father figure. While he would hear out a pitch to be a Grizzly, Bryant was never coming to Memphis. West expressed to Bryant that the best thing for his career would be to remain a Laker for life.
Jerry West’s time in Memphis should be remembered less about the postseason woes and the Laker-centric moves that impacted the Grizzlies. Instead, his run with the Grizzlies should be remembered for turning the fortunes of the organization while putting Memphis on the map as a NBA city — a core part of his Hall of Fame legacy as an executive.
Jerry West had been an executive for the Los Angeles Lakers for almost 20 years. After the everlasting championship pressure, he was burnt out, which led to him stepping back into a consultant role.
Suddenly, the itch hit.
Teams began selling their pitch for Jerry West to run their organization. He was between two playoff teams and the Memphis Grizzlies.
Late owner Michael Heisley flew out to Los Angeles to sell the Hall of Famer on running the Memphis Grizzlies.
It wasn’t a hard pitch for West.
“He just loved the idea of going somewhere to see if he could make a difference,” Ryan West said.
With the Grizzlies, he identified the opportunity to run an organization that was looking to turn things around and build something successful and sustainable.
At the time, the Grizzlies desperately wanted to change the misfortunes of the franchise. Since its inception in 1995, they had a winning percentage of 29.6% (124-418), one of the worst in North American professional sports. Their move from Vancouver to Memphis not only signaled a change of scenery, but also a desire to transform their reputation — and Jerry West was the man to execute on their turnaround.
“Well, we were really excited,” Shane Battier said. “You talk about culturally, we had some decent talent but we had no semblance of thoughts, of higher leadership, and it reflected. Won 23 games my rookie year, I lost more games by Christmas than I did in four years at Duke. It was bad. The next year, when Jerry was hired, it was the beginning of hope.”
Battier called it a career-defining challenge to take the worst franchise in North America — by the winning percentage — and turn them into a winner.
And brick by brick, Jerry West instilled that change, leading to architecting the Grizzlies’ first-ever playoff squads.
West’s first big change built momentum for the Grizzlies organization. Hiring Hubie Brown as head coach.
West fired Sidney Lowe 8 games into the 2002-03 season, after an 0-8 start — and also went 23-59 in each of the prior two seasons. West had his sights set on Hubie Brown. At the time, the legendary coach was 70 years old. When questions arose about his fit because of his age, West wasn’t fazed. He knew the Grizzlies needed a teacher.
And Jerry was perhaps the only person that could convince Hubie to come out of retirement.
It became the catalyst for turning things around for the Grizzlies’ franchise.
“It was a genius move, because the guys in that locker room needed a teacher,” Battier said. “And he was the perfect coach, but again that was Jerry’s genius. He saw that the locker room needed a teacher — not a taskmaster, not someone just to be all flash and dash, but someone to take this team’s franchise and mold it into what a winning team looks like.”
Hubie’s ability to teach basketball not only parlayed to wins but it also impressed West. His knack for explaining the game down to the fundamentals is impeccable.
“My dad was so impressed by Hubie,” West said. “He would call me after practice and say… ‘You won’t believe this drill he did today, how he explained this’. The way he described the game was different from any coach he had ever been around.”
Jerry West also made his presence felt in those practices, which was huge for the Grizzlies’ turnaround.
“He was engaged with our practices as far as conversation-wise with our players,” James Posey said. “What he’s done in his playing career, for me, I was all ears — whether it was critiquing my game, what I can do better, or if it was just for him to say … ‘Pose, I need you to get such and such going.’ It just meant a lot. Just sharing ideas, philosophies, mindsets, things like that with him … who not to get that information from better than the Logo himself.”
Improving their win total by 5 games in the 2002-03 season, they couldn’t reap the lottery benefits of a 28-win season because of a trade from the previous regime. In 1997, the Vancouver Grizzlies traded a 2003 pick that was top-1 protected for Otis Thorpe. So essentially — the pick became LeBron James or bust. The Grizzlies had a 6.4% chance of winning the 1st pick. The lottery comes around, ping pong balls drop, and the Grizzlies land the 2nd pick.
No LeBron James. No lottery pick.
That trade left an ace in the hole that Jerry West could’ve used to rebuild and establish the Memphis Grizzlies. Imagine Pau Gasol with Dwyane Wade… or Carmelo Anthony… or Chris Bosh. We’re talking about an entirely different dynamic for this franchise.
Alas, West worked with what he had, which was a solid foundation going forward. He and Hubie Brown were the architects of this team. They had a future All-Star continuing to develop in Pau Gasol, an ultra connector 3-and-D wing in Shane Battier, a dazzling floor general in Jason Williams, and the muscle to do the dirty work to ease pressure off the young Gasol in the late Lorenzen Wright.
Three subsequent moves in the 2003 calendar year helped add fuel to the fire of the momentum stirring, while serving as key pieces to what Jerry West was trying to build in Memphis.
At the 2003 trade deadline, West traded recent lottery pick Drew Gooden and Gordon Giricek for Mike Miller, Ryan Humphrey, a first-round pick, and a second-round pick. While it might seem perplexing to trade a top-5 pick 51 games into his NBA career, the situation with Gooden was different.
Coming into the Grizzlies job a month before the season, West had to rely on the existing scouting department — as they have done more homework on the incoming draft class, since he was coming out of retirement. They veered the safe route with accomplished Drew Gooden over the enigmatic high school phenom Amare Stoudemire.
Quickly, West identified that the fit wasn’t there and sought a trade that best fit this team. In came Mike Miller — the 2000-01 Rookie of the Year, and a sweet-shooting 6’8” wing. With this trade, and later moves, Jerry West began to build a team that makes more sense and is ready to compete. Despite being traded for the first time of his career, Miller was excited about the opportunity to create something special in Memphis with Jerry West and Hubie Brown as the team’s architects.
“I mean, it's the Logo, it's Jerry. You know he's building something special,” Miller said. “First conversation with him was how he wanted to build something here for the city. He wanted to build a team that would be competitive and have a chance to win.”
In the offseason, the Grizzlies signed James Posey, a promising 3-and-D wing that showed untapped upside in Denver and Houston. West said this simple sentence to sell Posey on becoming a Memphis Grizzly.
“I want you here, I believe you’ll make a difference to this team to get where we need to go.”
“To have somebody, the Logo, actually say those words that he wanted me there, and that I can be a piece that can get them to where they're trying to go — that was just music to my ears, especially coming from him and who he is,” Posey said.
Thirteen games into the Grizzlies’ 2003-04 campaign, they swapped Wesley Person and a 2004 first-round pick to the Portland Trail Blazers for Bonzi Wells — eyeing the veteran swingman for his toughness and scoring pop off the bench.
From there, Jerry West designed a team around budding star big man Pau Gasol that pieced together wonderfully. With his roster construction, and the guidance of Hubie Brown, the Memphis Grizzlies all the sudden had a system that was ready to chug towards competitiveness and relevancy.
Pau Gasol’s finesse game was the core of the system. Around him, they had Miller, Posey, Shane Battier, and Bonzi Wells — four wings capable of plugging in alongside Gasol, and can mix and match throughout (also: four wings ranging from 6’6” to 6’8” that can dribble, pass, shoot, and defend at a high level would be a godsend for a team in the modern NBA). Jason Williams was one of the NBA’s best playmakers, and Earl Watson was a steady “change of pace” guard behind him. From the 5 spot, Lorenzen Wright provided the muscle and dirty work, while Stromile Swift was a rim-running high-flier.
The Grizzlies had the talent but needed a system. Hubie Brown concocted a formula that centered around Gasol with a 10-man rotation, and the buy-in ultimately led to the best season the franchise had ever seen.
“The mentality was, we need this system, and everybody bought in,” former Grizzlies scout Tony Barone Jr. said about the rotation. “And I think it truly fed the system, but there was a comfort level to that. So it kept everybody invested in that better way to work, and I think that part of it really kind of fed itself and then you became a system.”
Hubie Brown had a simple rationale with it: “Look I'm going to play 10 players every night no matter what. And you know why, I'm going to play 10 players, because that means only two people will be pissed off at me every single night.”
The platoon style substitution pattern was an intramural method that paid dividends for this Grizzlies team. Guys would go to the scorer’s desk at a certain point in the quarter — every quarter — without being told, and they knew they had a finite amount of time to play hard and impact winning.
“We knew we had four minutes, so we had played as hard as we could, for as long as we could, and as fast as we could,” Battier said. “Our teams were never fatigued and in a fourth quarter, he said, ‘this is when, you know, we wear people down, and this is where we're going to beat them’. And he was exactly right. I'd never seen that in the NBA and to this day, no one's not in the NBA, but it worked for that team.”
The Grizzlies made a tremendous 22-win jump — winning 50 games in the 2003-04 season, and reaching the postseason for the first time in franchise history. The amazing organizational turnaround led to accolades, as Jerry West won Executive of the Year and Hubie Brown was awarded Coach of the Year.
Prior to the playoffs, owner Michael Heisley gifted West a new Maybach as a token of appreciation for the job he had done with the Grizzlies.
Even though Heisley unveiled a sparkly new Maybach in the Pyramid, West respectfully declined, saying his reward is making the playoffs and winning games.
The young Grizzlies were ultimately swept by the defending champion San Antonio Spurs in the first round.
The next season wasn’t quite as smooth. Hubie Brown resigned 12 games into the season, and was replaced by Mike Fratello. Pau Gasol and James Posey missed a combined 58 games due to injury. Despite the adversity, they made the playoffs as the 8th seed — taking on a 62-win Phoenix Suns consisting of MVP Steve Nash, Amare Stoudemire, Shawn Marion, Joe Johnson, and Quentin Richardson. Once again, the Grizzlies were swept.
Jerry West knew the team, as constructed, had tapped out of their potential and had to shake things up. The Grizzlies moved on from three players — two starters — of their playoff rotation: Jason Williams, James Posey, and Bonzi Wells. In that 2005 offseason, the Grizzlies pulled off a 5-team trade, the biggest one in franchise history. The trade went as constructed:
Grizzlies received Eddie Jones (from Heat) and Raul Lopez (Jazz, waived)
Heat received Antoine Walker (Celtics), Jason Williams (Grizzlies), James Posey (Grizzlies), Andre Emmett (Grizzlies), and draft rights to Roberto Duenas (Hornets)
New Orleans Hornets received Rasual Butler (Heat) and Kirk Snyder (Jazz)
Boston Celtics received Qyntel Woods (Heat), Curtis Borchardt (Jazz), the draft rights to Albert Miralles (Heat), a 2006 second-round pick (Heat), and a conditional second round pick (Heat)
Utah Jazz received Greg Ostertag (Grizzlies, was in a previous trade that sent him and Bobby Jackson to Memphis for Bonzi Wells)
After the trade, they filled the new starting point guard gap with Damon Stoudamire.
“I was looking for something fresh, but was also looking for something that had stability and was going in the right direction. So when I got the call from Memphis and Jerry, at that time, it all made sense,” Stoudamire said. “They had a great core. They had Pau, Mike, and Shane. I think that intrigued me a lot, and we talked about it — and to be honest with you, a lot of it had to do with their young core, but a lot of it had to do with Jerry and his vision.”
So going into the 2005-06 season, they had retained Gasol, Miller, Battier, and Wright from their previous rotation while inserting Eddie Jones, Bobby Jackson, and Damon Stoudamire into the fold. All three veteran players carried a wealth of postseason experience, as the Grizzlies were looking to take the next leap and advance deeper into the playoffs.
“It was an organization that was not only trying to be a good playoff team, but have some toughness,” Stoudamire said. “At that time, we had not won a playoff game either. That was one of the things he wanted to do — with myself, Eddie Jones, and Bobby Jackson — now you’re talking about 3 guys that had seen a lot, been through a lot.”
Despite the turnover, the Grizzlies were able to bolt towards the top of the Western Conference early. The ability to change that much of the roster and improve the next season — without acquiring another star — is a testament to the leadership of Jerry West for the culture and expectation he established.
“It's the stability upstairs, the culture, the identity, the expectations don't change,” Mike Miller said. “It's like anything in life, man, it starts from the top. And for him to be able to have the ability and the courage to make changes, identifying that, yeah, that team was really, really good, where we tapped out, we maxed out, that's the decision you got to make, and those are the hard decisions. It’s why you put those guys in position to make those decisions.”
They committed to playing the Grizzly way, as Miller coined it. The Grizzlies started out strong — the veteran additions and the All-Star leap from Gasol played a huge role in it. They started 2005 with a 18-10 record. However, a catastrophic knee injury — a freak accident — from Stoudamire smashed their hopes of a deep playoff run, as they had to replace its veteran conductor.
“If I never got hurt, we were not only playing well, but we were one of the best teams in the league,” Stoudamire said. “It wasn’t that I was the best player on the team, but I was a connector on that team. I allowed things to flow.”
The Grizzlies continued to stay the course as a postseason team. With playoff implications at stake, the Grizzlies and Clippers played each other in the season finale, with the winner playing the 60-win Mavericks and the loser facing the 44-win Denver Nuggets (Northwest Division winner) — due to playoff structure where the top-3 teams were all division winners, regardless of record. The Clippers tanked the game. The Grizzlies were ultimately swept by the Mavericks.
“That 2005-2006 team was to me one of the biggest what if’s in Memphis,” Stoudamire said.
Even though those teams never experienced playoff success, they were pivotal components to the organization’s trajectory — it was an unprecedented leap.
“I hope people understand that like when we got there in 2001, it was the worst franchise in North America,” Battier said. “And at the end of my time there in 2006, we had won 50 games three straight years or close to it. And we were a playoff team and a contender. That is ridiculous. That’s a ridiculous legacy for Jerry. To take the worst franchise in sports and turn them into a perennial winner in a very, very short time, that's the legacy that I hope people look at and not our playoff record.”
It created a Grizzlies’ standard of excellence, as now leadership and the city had a taste of postseason basketball. They gave the franchise life, an electrifying jolt that captivated the new fanbase of an arriving NBA city.
“There really was no life to the organization, and now it was the talk of the town,” Ryan West said. “To see the success they’ve had, the fanfare they have, people really rally around that team, and it was something he was just so proud to be a part of.”
The 2003-2006 Grizzlies didn’t have the accomplishments nor the glitz and glamor of the Los Angeles Lakers. However, the challenge of turning a franchise around, igniting a newfound fanbase, and setting a standard for organizational success cultivated into one of the proudest experiences of Jerry West’s illustrious career.
How Jerry West operated as a general manager simply revolved around keeping two things the main things: basketball and people.
His first day on the job, he sat down with the scouting department with a simple message: this is just basketball.
“We didn't really become a team that people now talk about as a true organization until Jerry came on. And that was simply because of how he handles the whole profession,” Barone said. “He walked in and said, ‘Listen guys, you have to remember this is just basketball’, which in this day and age of analytics and statistics and all of that is great, but from Jerry's mouth to hear simplify it was pretty impressive.”
That philosophy was at the core of his player evaluation. In draft rooms, West kept it simple.
A scout could come in with all this information and data to vouch for a player, but at the end of the day, Jerry wanted to know one simple thing: “can he play.” The scout couldn’t hide behind numbers; it was a yes or no question.
“It was a learning experience, because he wanted us just to find very good players that knew how to play the game,” Barone said. “Didn't matter if they had crazy stats. He wanted to know about the kid, the person and obviously his talent. So that was the first meeting where he said that.”
Secondly, he wanted to know who the player guards in the league.
“He scores 30, that’s great. Turn the jersey around. Who does he guard?”
It’s a question that simply indicates where a player fits within the team’s construct — not just on one side of the floor.
West also loved talking about football with his front office on Monday’s — enamored with the toughness of these players. After talking football, the scouts would pitch him on guys. These conversations began to intertwine, as West valued toughness in his players. Football was a reinforcement of the type of players he wanted on his basketball teams. The player that resonated within these discussions was Kyle Lowry — a tough point guard out of Villanova, who the Grizzlies eventually drafted in the 2006 draft.
“He valued toughness and guys that were winners,” Barone said. “We threw in [Lowry’s] edit and edit didn’t show a ton, but what did show was his North Philly attitude, his toughness. We brought him in, you were spun over.”
That specific desire for West’s player evaluation made him an elite executive at identifying the right role players for a team. While it didn’t pay off the way it did in Los Angeles, it led to Memphis finding their way as a winning organization.
“At each position, you had toughness there, and you had guys who worked,” James Posey said. “It was a nice balance of the toughness he wanted to see on the floor and basketball IQ to give us a chance to win.”
Though he didn’t possess all-time talent in Memphis, this skill as an executive enabled the development of a future Hall-of-Famer in Pau Gasol — whether it was identifying the skillsets that fit around him, or bringing in the right veteran voices in the locker room.
“The role players he put around Pau were guys that fit Pau’s strengths. He was really good in the post, he could play 1-on-1, he was long, he was athletic,” Stoudamire said. “You just look to play off of him — whether it’s pick-and-roll’s, whether it was him getting Mike looks for jump-shots, doing different things.”
With veterans — Damon Stoudamire and Eddie Jones, specifically — they empowered Pau Gasol to be the guy.
They told him, “if we’re going to go where we need to be, we don’t need you to be PG, we need you to be rated-R.”
Those elements of player evaluation — skills, toughness, and fit within the team construct — were the foundation of constructing great teams in his career as an executive, and specifically in Memphis.
Jerry West also had an uncanny ability to separate personal relationships and business — “separation of church and state” — and it trickled down to how he operated in front offices and in business with players.
Executives around the league saw West as a mentor, often seeking advice or just catching up as peers. It was all genuine too, but when it was time to talk business, he could flip a switch.
“He's known a guy for 30 years in the league in the business and he could have a conversation with him asking him how his family's doing,” Barone said. “Then ask him in the next sentence, you know, are we going to trade this player for those two players?”
There was never animosity with it, as they knew they had to discuss business. His relationships around the league helped him gather intel around the league — who’s available via trade, where a player they like can fall in the draft. It also served as a catalyst for constructing the aforementioned 5-team trade. It’s why Kobe Bryant took a meeting with him to seek guidance during free agency.
This separation of church and state also came down to players. Trading players isn’t as easy as podcast or talk show hosts — or trade machine junkies — seem to think. There’s a dynamic, a relationship formed between a player and front office. Sometimes it’s bad, which may make a trade easier, but sometimes it’s good or great, which makes the process much more difficult. While he may have admiration for the player — for his game and his character — West had a sound awareness of when to make tough calls for the betterment of the team.
While West had high praise for James Posey in his recruitment as a free agent, business had to be done two years later. West had to shake things up after the 2004-05 season, and Posey was a part of that process — sending him to Miami in a 5-team trade. At the end of the trade, West made sure to get Posey in an ideal situation without it coming at the expense of the team.
“Sometimes you don’t have a chance to have that conversation,” Posey said. “At the end of the day, it was more so the nature of the business. He thought it was a great situation for me. You don’t hear that too often in situations like that.”
He also faced the tough decision of trading away Shane Battier on draft night of 2006. Battier had been a homegrown piece that served as a foundational connector for the Grizzlies to take their next step. However, they had an opportunity to add Rudy Gay — an ultra athletic 6’9” wing with shot-creation upside, a swing on a star archetype from a coveted position.
“Having the wherewithal to know, I have to make this move was impressive for me, because you're again, going back to personal versus business,” Barone said.
On the personal side of it, Battier — a fan favorite, an integral part of the Grizzlies franchise — was the opportunity cost. West handled this news with professionalism through the emotions of his first trade. West had the message for Battier:
“You'll always be, you know, loved here in Memphis for what you did for the city. And we appreciate you, you know, we've lost in the playoffs three straight years and got swept and we just have to make a change. And, you know, this gives us the best chance to change the dynamic.”
Battier understood the mindset and appreciated the empathy.
But there’s another side of the pendulum. West showed that he cared about his players — whether it was being involved in practices and discussions afterwards, or supporting a player through a tough time. After Stoudamire’s season-ending knee surgery, he woke up to Jerry West there by his side.
“That meant a lot to me, because he didn’t have to be there,” Stoudamire said.
His success as an executive revolved around being a straight shooter. It can be blunt questions about a player’s skillset, doing business with peers in the industry, making tough trades, or even telling agents they’re not going to draft their guy to avoid wasting their time. He was unapologetically himself with his intensity and genuineness, which commanded respect with whoever worked with Jerry West.
West’s approach as executive and eye for the game had a trickle down effect to many things beyond wins and losses.
West made Memphis a free agency destination, because people respected him and knew they were getting into good business with him. With the bright lights of Los Angeles, New York, or Chicago always intriguing everyone, Memphis provided an opportunity to play for a pillar of the league — a legend who had a knack for building competitive teams in his post-playing career. Jerry West’s presence assured prospective players that the organization was building something productive, and other good players were going to be a part of it.
“When you sit in a room with Jerry West, you know he just reeks of success,” Mike Miller said. “And that's what you really wanna be a part of. You want to be part of something special, and they really built something special here.”
Another domino effect is how he positioned people for success — whether it was a guy in a pre-draft workout, or a player identifying post-career plans.
In a pre-draft workout, Jerry West kept a prospect for a few minutes, instructing him on how he could get his shot off even faster. The player was already highly-regarded for his shooting, but Jerry evaluated his shot and showed him how he can get it off even faster. The Grizzlies ultimately didn’t draft that player, and it didn’t matter to Jerry. He wanted to give a helpful tip for a talented shooter entering the league.
That player was Kyle Korver — who’s top-10 all-time in 3-point percentage and 3-point makes, and became one of the best shooters of the 21st century.
A number of former Grizzlies players have experienced success in their post-playing careers on the evaluation and coaching sides.
After stints as an assistant coach at the University of Memphis, and as a head coach at a local Memphis high school, Mike Miller started an agency called LIFT Sports Management — where he represents Ja Morant, Paolo Banchero, potential top-3 pick VJ Edgecombe, among many more athletes. His time with Jerry West serves as a link of the chain for success as an agent.
“You also want to have to work with them, and you want to be a part of their life, and you want to be a part of their journey, and you believe in them, and you're gonna put a lot of time and effort into them,” Miller said. “And so seeing how he interacted, how he valued players, how you valued talent, how he solved the game. Jerry was a guy who identified talent very, very well. He knew how to bring them together. He knew how to put people in positions to succeed with coaches.”
Shane Battier joined the Miami Heat front office in 2017 as the Director of Basketball Development and Analytics before transitioning to his current consultant role. As a player for a Jerry West organization, Battier learned about channeling fiery competitiveness into a big picture focus on success.
“Jerry was actually pretty good about taking a long view on the season, taking a long view on success, taking a long view on losing. And he was an unbelievable competitor,” Battier said. “I appreciated him taking the long view on the progress that a front office has to make sure that you maintain success over a long period of time. It's hard to be really emotional in the front office and make irrational decisions. You just don’t last that way.”
Damon Stoudamire has been coaching since he retired — having stints as an assistant coach with the Memphis Grizzlies, University of Arizona, University of Memphis, and the Boston Celtics. He’s had time as a head coach of the University of the Pacific, and is now with Georgia Tech University. His time with the Grizzlies prepared him for his journey, as his injury shifted his focus — veering towards a mentorship role, as he was at peace with himself with his injury at his place in his career.. He took the mentorship role of Kyle Lowry and Mike Conley under his wing — realizing that teaching them about work ethic, routine, and preparation was all coaching. His time with Memphis and for a Jerry-led organization prepared him for coaching — a pivotal moment of Stoudamire’s career that leaves him with everlasting appreciation for both the organization and West.
“Without Jerry, I would’ve never cut my teeth the way I did,” Stoudamire said. “He was a guy that studied the game and people — he watched, saw where they could fit, and he had a vision for them. As I started to coach, those are things I did. It doesn’t matter where a player is ranked, how does he fit with the things I like to do? How can I keep his trajectory going the right way? And that’s where Jerry West sees.”
James Posey has been an assistant coach in the league since 2014, and is now on the Phoenix Suns coaching staff. Playing for the Grizzlies, he got a sense of the type of competitor Jerry was, while also understanding the power of using your voice from his example.
“And being able to use my voice, that’s just learning from Jerry as well,” Posey said. “He will come down from his office and be there on our practice court, pull you to the side or just sit down while guys are shooting the shit, and he’ll have conversations with you and just be picking your brain, just having real conversations about the game of basketball. That’s something I took with me, as far as trying to communicate and using my voice a little bit more on the coaching side — just building that trust and relationship to those players, because that’s all you have is your voice.”
Jerry West’s mindset on constructing teams and on managing the day-to-day operations of a NBA general manager led to organizational and individual success in Memphis.
Even though Jerry West was coming from the Los Angeles scene after roughly 40 years with the Lakers, everything about Memphis brought out his small town heart — growing up in Cheylan, West Virginia.
West kept life very simple in Memphis. He worked hard to win the challenge of getting the Grizzlies on track. He liked going to lunch on Beale Street. He loved going to Grisanti’s Restaurant with family and loved ones. He frequently shopped at James Davis clothing store outside the city.
“He loved Memphis,” Ryan West said. “He’s at heart a small town guy. Relative to LA, Memphis was a small town. He enjoyed being able to drive to work everyday without sitting in rush hour traffic. Being able to live at a different pace of life after being in LA for 40 years.”
West loved the energy from Memphis, captivated by the electricity of the crowd and recognizing that it’s a vital link for success. He wanted to be a part of the community in Memphis — know the owners of local diners, small spots, help connect people at social events.
Two stories capture Jerry’s heart for the Memphis community.
The first has to do with spring cleaning.
Tony Barone Jr. was in his office, and Jerry called him over and told him to try on a suit jacket. It was a nice one, handmade luxury material. He tries it on, and though it’s a bit short in the arms, it fit well enough to keep. Jerry later called Tony and said he had to help his wife, Karen, with spring cleaning and at least 30 suits to try on.
It was a down-to-earth moment that still resonates with him.
“I don't know if that happens in a big city like Chicago, the bright lights of New York or LA” Barone said. “But here he is – bringing all these suits to work one day and to this day, I still love it and I was like, man, it's so cool.
The second is about helping a young Memphian aspiring to breakthrough in the basketball operations industry.
Andy Shiffman grew up in Memphis and quickly immersed himself into Grizzlies basketball as a senior at White Station High School. After his freshman year at Indiana, he took a communications relations internship with the Grizzlies, which exposed him to the basketball operations side. From there, his eyes were opened to basketball operations and team-building — leading to his decisions in college and law school to be centered furthering his goal of working for a NBA front office.
While he was at Marquette law school, he reached out to Jerry West’s administrative assistant trying to get in touch with him — thinking it was a long shot to speak with someone of Jerry West’s stature as a law student.
“What did I have to lose,” he thought.
He was home in Memphis over a holiday break, and he got her on the phone, and then she says “please hold on the phone for Mr. West.” Initially nervously excited, he spoke with Jerry West for about 20-30 minutes with career advice on breaking into basketball operations and with some insight on the business of basketball. Two of the biggest pieces of advice he got — if you want a job in basketball operations, you have to surround yourself with anything and everything basketball. West also told Shiffman, there are people on every staff that did not play or did not coach at a high level, but they just grinded it out and they worked their way up, and there's no reason he couldn’t do that. At the end of the call, he told him to give him a heads up next time he’s in town, so he can come to the office face to face.
The next holiday break, Shiffman connected with his assistant, and Jerry invited him to the office. They talked for about two hours. He had a casual conversation on landing a job in the industry, team-building philosophies, and stories about his time with the Grizzlies and Lakers. He even sat in the office while West was on a call with another team for trade negotiations, and he got to see paperwork of different mechanisms of team-building (depth chart, roster, salary cap) — signs of trust in the young Shiffman.
“And not only did he take time out of his day, but he took time, a lot of time out of his day to meet with me face-to-face,” Shiffman said of the meeting. “Didn't put a limit on it, during the NBA season … [it] was always pretty special to me and something that always sticks with me. It speaks to who he was as a person, and I think how much he cared about educating young people and helping young people.”
Andy Shiffman is now the Vice President of Basketball Representation for Priority Sports and Entertainment, and his rise towards that position was fueled from the confidence Jerry West instilled in him through their first meetings.
“It was a very genuine, authentic interaction, and it really absolutely meant a ton to me,” Shiffman said.
These stories and this mentality embodies a statement that holds in Memphis to this day — if you love Memphis, Memphis will love you back. He was proud of what he built in Memphis, and he loved the community that was a part of this experience.
West accomplished his goal of turning the franchise around, and it has had a lasting impact on the organization as a whole since then. He helped lay the foundation for the Grizzlies with his last several moves.
In 2006, he drafted Rudy Gay and Kyle Lowry — and though the latter wasn’t a long-term solution, he posed an immediate option for their future. In the 2006-07 campaign, the Grizzlies missed Pau Gasol due to injury for the first 2 months of the season, and the slow start ultimately led to them vying for the Greg Oden, Kevin Durant sweepstakes. They actually possessed the best odds of the number 1 pick at 25% — roughly 45% chance of either the 1st or 2nd pick — after a 22-60 record. Despite high chances of landing Kevin Durant, they ended up with the 4th pick, the lowest possible pick they could have received. All wasn’t totally lost, as they came away with Mike Conley — their starting point guard, a key fixture of the core, for over a decade.
“I think what he wanted to do in that situation was accumulate assets, so the organization can put itself in the best position possible,” Stoudamire said. “A lot of the things they did reflected Jerry’s blueprint of how he built the team in the first place.”
Even though they didn’t have the desired playoff success, the Memphis Grizzlies became a relevant NBA team that has had an impact in the Western Conference since his tenure began. He set a precedent for Grizzlies basketball, and created a launching pad for the Core 4 teams and the current team led by Ja Morant, Jaren Jackson Jr., and Desmond Bane.
“Are we disappointed in our playoff success? Absolutely,” Miller said. “But it doesn’t diminish the fact that we took someone that was — when Jerry got here and then when Hubie got here — in the top five in the draft every year and built it through the draft, built it through trade, and it more importantly and more impressively built through free agency, which is hard to do.”
So while people remember Jerry West’s time in Memphis for the playoff woes and for — ultimately — roster-decision misconceptions, it should be acknowledged for much more.
“He’s somebody that turned the franchise around, that made them relevant, that made them competitive,” Ryan West said. “And built a foundation that carries on to this day.”
And everything about his tenure in Memphis resonated with him until the day he passed.
“Starting that first year, being in the Pyramid, games weren’t well attended,” West said. “Getting to the point where they were competitive, the Pyramid all of the sudden became almost like a college-like atmosphere. It was exciting to go to games. Then opening the new arena, and transitioning from the Vancouver color scheme and embracing the Beale Street Blue, giving the Grizzlies a new identity that fit its new home. It just seemed like things were trending in the right direction. I’m proud of the legacy he created there.”
While many people will associate Jerry West’s Hall of Fame induction as an executive for his accomplished career with the Los Angeles Lakers and later Golden State Warriors, his run as the Memphis Grizzlies is the part of his legacy that holds just as much weight as those championships.
In Memphis, Jerry West embraced the task at hand: being the lead architect of the Memphis Grizzlies organization, turning it around, and building a foundation for everything the franchise has been since he took over in 2002.
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