Wizard of Griz

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Memphis?

East is still East and West is still West, but now Jerry West is East, if not in the NBA where he’s still in his old conference, at least in real life, running a team based on the eastern side of the Mississippi River.

Talk about your breaks with the past. The last time he went to camp with anyone but the Lakers, he was a West Virginia senior, Dwight Eisenhower was president and the Lakers were still in Minneapolis, a year from their 1960 move into the state-of-the-art arena going up in downtown Los Angeles, the Sports Arena.

How can we imagine Lakerdom, suddenly without West, without Chick Hearn?

West arrived in Los Angeles as a rookie in the fall of 1960. Chick came on to call the playoffs the next spring (until then the new team couldn’t get its games on radio and didn’t have an announcer) and stayed the rest of his life.

With Elgin Baylor, they were the Laker trinity that provided the glamour that would become part of team lore. More to the point, it came in handy to sell the game to Angelenos, who barely knew they had arrived, or cared.

This wasn’t like the Dodgers’ arrival in 1958, which was front-page news and required great civic initiatives to procure the downtown land for the new stadium. Minneapolis barely noticed the Lakers had left; nor was Los Angeles at a fever pitch. Attendance at their first game was 4,044.

As Baylor’s knees went, West became their beating heart as a player in the ‘60s and ‘70s, then their brain as general manager in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Before his nervous system went, he retired in 2001.

So what’s he doing here?

Jerry West of the ... Memphis Grizzlies?

“The weird part,” he says, sitting in the stands in the Pyramid (local arena in Memphis) as the Grizzlies (whoever they are) practice, “yesterday I talked to [Laker GM] Mitch Kupchak and we talked about Laker players.

“I wished him well, told him I thought they had the team to beat. Obviously, you feel that incredible loyalty and sense of what that franchise has meant in my life. At times, it’s sad to think that I’m not there, but I really believe I did the right thing for me.

“The bottom line, maybe sometimes you have to do selfish things in life. This is kind of, from my perspective, a selfish thing because I left a lot of wonderful friends, a situation with the people and the coaching staff they have in place.

“That franchise is going to be really successful, particularly for as long as Shaquille [O’Neal] plays. That was the difficult part of it. But the other thing was that, it didn’t bring me the same good feeling, even when we were winning. It just didn’t do it.”

Of course. That was Our Jerry. We came to know his moods and foibles as if they were part of the landscape, like the weather. In June, the marine layer hangs over the beach in the morning and burns off in the afternoon. In June, West considers retiring from whatever he’s doing.

It was ever thus. So two Junes after he finally did retire, he again grew restless with what he was doing and came back to start all over, at age 64, from the very bottom.

In Lakerdom, the heavy lifting was over, which made him almost ornamental, but it’s not like that here. The Grizzlies, formerly of Vancouver, have never won more than 23 games and he’s a reason to hope. Actually, because they’ve had clueless owners and GMs, he’s the first reason for hope they’ve had.

“It’s exciting for me to come to work, knowing he’s the captain of the ship,” second-year forward Shane Battier said. “Everyone from the PR staff to the medical staff to the players feel energized by his presence....

“It starts at the top, and getting Mr. West just sends a signal throughout the organization.”

In that case, get ready for lots of signals.

“We would get [to games] early and he would be upset about something, frustrated about something -- or happy about something,” Magic Johnson said recently, reminiscing about all his years with West.

“Even when he was happy, he was mad. I tell you, the organization, the city, as well as us as former players, are going to miss him....

“And those guys better get ready,” Johnson added, laughing, “because they don’t know what’s about to come.”

Bad Times,

Worse Times

What thrill of victory? With West, winning seemed to bring a special agony of its own.

Nor was it hard to tell, because he wore his hyper-critical emotions on his sleeve. It was one reason people cared so deeply for him -- fans, media, even bitter rivals.

The Boston Celtics’ John Havlicek once told him on the floor, “I love you.” Bill Russell flew out for the ceremony marking Jerry’s retirement as a player and announced: “If I could have one wish in life granted, it would be that you would always be happy.”

It wasn’t that West was never happy. He had a nice family, a lot of friends, was often out of the Laker offices by noon on his way to the golf course and was generally considered fun to be around by the Lakers’ little people.

It was just that whenever the Lakers won, and everyone around him was dancing in the street, he’d be asking himself if this was all there was.

In 1985 when he was general manager, they won their most monumental series before or since, coming back from a 148-114 defeat in Game 1 to overcome the Celtics, who had dumped them in seven NBA Finals, six of which West had played in.

The next day, The Times’ Steve Springer asked if he’d be in the parade. No way, West said. He wasn’t going to ride through town on a parade float so people could boo him.

However, even his friends were surprised by his transformation in the late ‘90s, after he finished perhaps the greatest rebuilding job in NBA history, tearing apart a team that made the Finals as late as 1991, getting back above 50 wins while keeping its salary cap low enough to sign O’Neal in 1996, stealing Kobe Bryant in a trade the same summer, finally recommending Phil Jackson (West says), along with O’Neal (Shaq says) to get over the top by 2001.

Within weeks of signing O’Neal in 1996, West got the blues and told reporters he might not want to keep working long.

Two seasons later, he announced he’d leave, saying he was burned out, then recanted after the Lakers were swept in the playoffs by the Utah Jazz (whew, bad news, just in time).

The season after that was the one with Dennis Rodman, when West, horrified but disinclined to confront owner Jerry Buss, absented himself from games for weeks.

Fortunately or not, the best/worst was yet to come: The next season, the Lakers won a title.

West was a basket case that spring of 2000. He was alarmed that Jackson was dating the boss’ daughter, Jeanie Buss, leading to speculation among insiders that Jackson was running West off.

However, everything spooked West that spring. Even the Finals, a humdrum series against Indiana that the Lakers led, 3-1, and won, 4-2, unsettled him to the point he not only stopped going to games, he didn’t even watch them on TV.

Before Game 6, as fans gathered in Staples Center and outside to watch on the giant TV screen, in taverns and homes, West hopped in his car and fled.

“I was up past Santa Barbara, as a matter of fact,” he says. “I had a friend of mine at the game. I said, ‘Call me when it’s over.’

“That made me realize this had become almost a sickness and that I just couldn’t do this anymore. It was the last game. And I thought how happy the people were. I know how happy the players were, how happy the fans and the owner. And it was nothing to me.

“It’s really hard to say that because I don’t think unless you sort of lived all this stuff and was as close to watching this, that you could even imagine feeling that way. And even to this day, it was like, if that series hadn’t gotten over that night -- you know, it’s not even really funny.

“At times, you almost feel ill in even thinking about them losing. That really convinced me that I didn’t need to do this anymore. It was terrible for me. It was terrible for the people around me, my family, my friends. Everything ceased to become fun.”

He confided his distress to his usual confidantes. The usual rumors circulated. Johnson, who has been through it before, said he’d believe it when he saw West on the podium making the announcement.

It turned out that Laker publicist John Black had to make the announcement. West was not only burned out but so charred, he wouldn’t attend his farewell news conference.

It wasn’t held in a Beverly Hills hotel ballroom with Buss and all the Laker greats there, but on the court at their El Segundo practice facility, with only a few reporters attending.

West was one year into a four-year, $14-million contract. With nothing to do but make an occasional decision, kick back and accept congratulations for putting together their budding dynasty, the greatest Laker of them all just faded away.

Guess Who’s

Coming to Dinner

Well, it could have worked.

For a season, West told everyone how relaxed he felt but, of course, he got antsy and began wondering if he had done the right thing, as the offers started coming. And the more he said no, the bigger the offers got.

Still, he had no intention of leaving Southern California. Once last season, a Newsday reporter phoned his house to see if he might be interested in taking over the New York Knicks but got West’s wife, Karen, instead.

“New York?” said Karen West, pleasantly. “Oh, no.”

Several teams, including the Atlanta Hawks, sounded out West. As usual, some of his millionaire golf/poker friends said they would buy teams and hire him to run them. West has always had lots of friends like Steve Wynn, owner of the Las Vegas Mirage hotel and casino, eager to do deals with him.

Then Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley came up with a stunning offer -- reportedly $5 million to $7 million a year for five seasons and perhaps a piece of the team -- and West, who always insists it’s not about the money but does love to be stroked, couldn’t say no.

West, impressed, now compares Heisley to Buss, although it hasn’t occurred to anyone else. All Heisley had done before in two seasons was pull the team out of scenic Vancouver and hire the voluble, overmatched Dick Versace, a personal friend, at huge numbers to run the basketball operation.

The Grizzlies under Versace went 45-119 in two seasons, sending the impatient Heisley back onto the market, where this time he bagged the elephant.

“He’s been Mr. L.A.,” Coach Sidney Lowe said. “When I heard about [the possibility West might come] I thought, ‘No, no way he’s coming. I hope he comes but he’s not coming.’

“When I finally got the call, Jerry called me and told me he was coming -- he called me. I mean, just out of nowhere. I didn’t even know he had my telephone number and he told me he was coming.”

This was a call Lowe was happy to get, having been hired by Versace, making him a holdover with a 45-119 record. However, it isn’t West’s way to come in and start lopping heads off ... immediately. So if there’s a lot of speculation Jerry would like to hire his old Laker coach, Mike Dunleavy, Lowe will still get a chance first.

Memphis is small, friendly and humid, with the nation’s No. 43 metropolitan area, which ranks it last in the NBA.

It’s a crossroads, or in other words, people go through here on their way somewhere else. The Pyramid sits right by the Mississippi River, with Arkansas just across the bridge. St. Louis sits 250 miles upriver. New Orleans is 400 miles downriver.

It was always like that. Country music coming out of Nashville ran into blues coming up the river from New Orleans and became rockabilly, which became rock ‘n’ roll. Elvis Presley first recorded here at Sun Records, which was also the label of B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash.

Sun’s little studio is still open at 706 Union St., an unpretentious shrine in comparison to the tourists’ favorite, Graceland. The city may be small, but it’s soulful, which makes it a good fit for West, who’s all soul, himself.

The team -- well, let’s just say West won’t have to worry about how he feels after winning a title for a while.

There are several good young players -- Battier, Pao Gasol, Lorenzen Wright, Jason Williams. West’s first No. 1 pick, Drew Gooden, just burned up the exhibition season, averaging 18 points and 11.5 rebounds for the Grizzlies. So, at least they have somewhere to start and, for a change, someone in charge who knows which direction to go in.

So here he is, back on the job, feeling funny about it and right at home, at the same time.

“Just being away from it was kind of a wake-up call for me,” he says. “It said, ‘You better really be 100% sure the next time you say you’re not going to do this.’

“I know it’s going to be difficult, but I’ll be honest with you -- I’ve been in a situation where I’ve really seen the best of it. I want to know what it’s like on the other side. To me, when your team wins all the time, when you start the season and you know you’re going to make the playoffs, that’s pretty easy. But I think it really helps to see the other side of it....

“This is the fun part of it, but I would like to see two players out here that we had in Los Angeles. I know I could go to bed nights smiling and feeling good about our chances at the end of the year.”

He means Shaq and Kobe, but they’re from his former life. As glorious as it was and as long as it lasted, that one’s over.