West Wants Off the Hook

At the outset of Jerry West’s annual retirement crisis last week, the only thing certain was that he was embarking on an Alaskan fishing trip.

The good news for the Lakers is, he has returned.

The bad news is, he didn’t think about them once.

“That’s the first time in 40 years that’s happened,” he said Friday in a phone interview. “That really told me something.”

What did it tell him?

“I’m not ready to say yet, please, I can’t say anything until the first week in August,” West said.

But after a 45-minute conversation, the signals are as clear as an Arctic summer sky.

Jerry West is really retiring.

And there’s apparently nothing anybody can do about it.

Although he refused to confirm his decision, his words sounded nothing like his previous cries of wolf.

As a perfectionist personality running a legendary franchise for an eccentric owner, the stress has finally doubled him over.

“Everything around here has taken its toll,” he said. “You see my outside, but you don’t see my inside, and it’s just awful in there. This compulsion with winning, it’s a sickness.”

So he thinks there is no better time to cure that “sickness” then after a championship?

“It would be the ultimate way to say goodbye,” he acknowledged.

It appears he will wait until he has helped the Lakers sign free agents during the first week of August before making retirement official.

There will apparently be no news conference, only a simple letter of thanks.

And then he will disappear for a year.

Forget any last-minute efforts by Jerry Buss to make him a part-owner.

Forget any buzzer-beating pleas by a city worried it won’t recognize the Lakers without him.

And forget this notion about West becoming a consultant, no matter what the Lakers might eventually tell us.

Although he wouldn’t say officially, it appears West is ready for a clean, quiet break from an organization for which, during the last 40 years, he has lost too much sweat.

“I remember when I first came out here, the Dodgers and Rams were the biggest things in town, and my first two nights we drew about 4,800 and 4,200,” he said. “And now, to drive around seeing all that purple and gold, to see how we’ve energized the city and to know that I was part of that . . . It’s enough gratitude for me.”

Apparently, it will have to be.

Because of his stress, West acknowledged that he missed the best parts of the Lakers’ championship run and every bit of their celebration.

He has missed events before, but never this many.

And while his absences certainly weren’t bad for the Lakers--West had already done his job--they proved to West that this entire ordeal was getting a little silly.

“When my heart is racing so bad I have to go to the doctor . . . and then after we win the championship, it slows down and everything is fine?” West asked. “My problems with the job are not physical, they are mental.”

The Lakers’ compelling Game 7 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers in the Western Conference finals?

West was in a movie theater witnessing a different sort of comeback.

He and a friend were watching “Gladiator.”

“If I had been at the Staples Center, I would have jumped out a window,” West said.

And for their championship-clinching victory against the Indiana Pacers?

He didn’t watch even one minute of the final series--”I knew we would win, and, in fact, we didn’t play that good and still won,” he said.

But he took special precautions for the finals. He climbed in his car at the opening tip and starting driving north on Highway 101.

He drove up and down that highway the entire game. He figured he was somewhere in Thousand Oaks at the final buzzer.

A friend called him periodically from the arena, “But I couldn’t hear him for all the cheering,” West said.

Listen to West talk and you realize, maybe retirement is not only his best option, but his only one.

Unlike his wife and children, he didn’t attend the victory parade. He didn’t take his rightful spot on the podium.

“That stuff’s not me, it’s never been me,” he said.

He has spoken to Shaquille O’Neal only once since the Lakers won the championship, and has yet to formally congratulate Kobe Bryant, even though both players are like his sons.

“People like me should not be seen in good times, only in bad times,” he said. “It’s not my place.”

West was reminded, he has only one place, and that is with the Lakers, and if Jerry Buss or Phil Jackson were driving him away, then. . . .

“No, no, no, I have no problem with either man,” he said. “I’ve worked well for Jerry for all these years. And Phil, I really do like him. I laugh at him sometimes because he’s different, but he has a great touch with players, a real calming influence.”

But it is known that West has never felt truly appreciated by Buss.

And it can be guessed that he is worried about the potential conflicts arising from Jackson’s relationship with Jeanie Buss, the owner’s daughter.

Surely none of that stuff would make it harder for him to retire.

Just as surely, though, Jerry West’s biggest problems seem to be with Jerry West.

It is a problem that he intimated could disappear with time. This is why we’re guessing he might leave for only a year.

After that, he’ll still be only 63, and other teams will surely offer him lots of money and a chance to build something new and well, maybe hello Clippers?

Jerry West does not want to talk about the Clippers. He does not want to talk about the Lakers. He does not really even want to talk about basketball, preferring to discuss the merits of “Gladiator.”

“I was going to sleep and every dream I was having was about the Lakers, and that was sad,” he said.

In an Alaskan fishing village this week, those dreams stopped. Perhaps that is even sadder.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.