Each year we sadly lose great sportsmen from the past.
But never before have we lost a player whose likeness is embodied in his sport’s logo.
Jerry West was the man whose image has been a central feature of the NBA branding for the past half-century.
West was very deserving of such status. He was voted onto the All-NBA First Team 10 times - one of only 10 players ever to achieve that level.
Despite all his success in the game, West was tormented by the fact that his Lakers’ teams lost in the NBA Finals six times to the Celtics, and then one more time to the Knicks, before they finally won the title in 1972, near the end of his career.
You can feel almost feel West’s anguish in his autobiography, an outstanding book co-authored by my friend, Jonathan Coleman.
Here’s the link to the book on Amazon which I highly recommend:
West by West
What most people don’t know, and you won’t even find in West’s autobiography, is a record he set, that I personally feel is perhaps the greatest individual record in American professional sports history.
The 41 Game Personal Winning Streak
Jerry West played in 41 consecutive regular season games that his team won.
That’s astonishing.
And yet almost no one knows about it.
In early 2022, when I found out about the 41 game personal winning streak I mentioned it to Jonathan Coleman. Even he had not previously been aware of it.
Here’s what Jonathan Coleman, co-author of West’s autobiography, had to say about the 41 game personal winning streak in an email he sent me last week, “very few people realize that what is already impressive--the 33 game win streak--is even more impressive, and hard to grasp, that it is legitimately 41. And yet, part of the tragedy that makes up who West was is that the losses in his life plagued and tormented him the most. Especially the six losses in one decade to the Celtics.”
Explaining the Streak
To clarify, Jerry West, the star guard of the Los Angeles Lakers from 1960 - 1974, had a streak of 41 straight games he played in which were won by his team.
The streak began on February 26, 1971 and ended on January 9, 1972.
For a little shy of an entire year, Jerry West’s Lakers won every single game he played.
In that span of time, the Lakers played many additional games in which West was not on the court due to injury. And they didn’t fare so well without him.
The Anatomy of the Streak
West’s streak started when the Lakers won 4 straight games late in the 1970-71 season.
In the 4th game of the streak, West suffered a season ending knee injury in Buffalo on March 2, 1971.
Then, playing without Jerry West, the Lakers went just 3 - 8 to close out the 1970-71 regular season.
In the 1971 playoffs, the Lakers were 5 - 7 as West was unavailable to play due to the knee injury. They were knocked out in the Conference Finals, 4 games to 1, by the Bucks, who went on to win the championship. This marked the first time in 4 years the Lakers had not reached the Finals.
At the beginning of the 1971-72 season, West played in the first 4 games of the season (with the Lakers winning all 4), but then he missed the next 5 games. In that stretch the Lakers had a record of just 2 - 3.
When West came back, the Lakers went on their legendary 33 game winning streak. And West played in every one of those games.
The 33 game team winning streak remains not only the longest in NBA history, but also the longest team winning streak in major American professional sports history.
But Jerry West himself did even better than the 33 game streak. Because the Lakers won the 8 prior games he had played in before the long team winning streak began, it gave West the personal winning streak of 41 games.
What makes West’s 41 game personal winning streak truly amazing is looking at it this way.
41 wins - 0 losses in games Jerry West played
10 wins - 18 losses in games Jerry West did not play due to injury
It is also insightful that no one else on the Lakers besides West had a personal winning streak of more than 33 games - the duration of the team’s winning streak.
I feel this 41 game personal winning streak by Jerry West should be the defining achievement of one of the greatest basketball players ever.
It should also serve to obliterate any sense of failure for all those losses in the NBA Finals. The fact is that West’s Lakers were always outmanned as long as Bill Russell roamed the middle for the Celtics.
But during the 41 game personal winning streak, no one could beat Jerry West’s Lakers. Over that entire span Jerry West averaged 25 points / 10 assists / 5 rebounds and shot 50% from the field - one of the great personal stat lines in history.
And most important, his team never lost a game.
The Last Game Prior to the Streak
It is almost poetic that the greatest winning streak of Jerry West’s, or anyone else’s professional career, had its beginnings in a time of total despair.
In the game prior to the start of the streak, on the night of February 24, 1971, Jerry West had one of the worst games of his NBA career.
It is no surprise that it took place in the place he dreaded the most - The Boston Garden.
In the 1970-71 season this was West’s second and last visit to Boston. The first one had not gone well back on December 2, 1970. In that game West shot an uncharacteristic 5 for 16 and the Lakers lost.
West was haunted by the Boston Garden.
In 1962, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1968 and 1969, the Lakers had reached the Finals against the Celtics.
They lost every time.
On the night of February 24, 1971 in Boston, it seems that Jerry West reached rock bottom.
He went 1 for 11 from the field and the Lakers were blown out.
It was the worst shooting performance of his entire career.
The Lakers’ 20 point loss on that night must have added further to West’s grief.
The game extended a 10 game shooting slump for West. 10 straight games in which he had shot less than 50% from the field in each game. Across the 10 games he had shot just 37%.
He still managed to score 20 points per game during the slump, but in those 10 games he was well off Jerry West standards.
In the first 55 games of the 1970-71 season, in contrast, West had played well shooting 52% and averaging 28 points per game.
The Long Beach Independent featured a headline after the Boston brouhaha in the February 25, 1971 paper, “West Hits Rock Bottom.” The self-deprecating West told reporter, Doug Ives, “I’m getting older and I’m worn out… I’m just a bad basketball player.”
The Beginning of Something Special
Two nights after the blowout in Boston, The Lakers came home for a game against the Supersonics. And quietly something magical started to happen for Jerry West.
On February 26, 1971, the Lakers beat the Supersonics 145 - 121 in what turned out to be the first of the 41 game personal winning streak.
West had 21 points and 10 assists on 9 for 15 shooting in 32 minutes.
In the next game, West scored 42 and the Lakers beat the Warriors by 5.
Game 3 of the streak was a blowout victory in Cleveland against the first year Cavaliers in which West shot 9 for 18.
Then the Lakers made the 200 mile trip up the shores of Lake Erie to play the old Buffalo Braves.
West started the game hot in cold Buffalo where the outside temperature was 25 degrees at game time. Late in the 2nd quarter he was 7 for 8 with 15 points and 5 assists and the Lakers were well out in front. West was on track for perhaps his best game of the season.
Then disaster struck.
In a scramble for a loose ball under the Braves’ basket, West suffered a torn medial ligament in his right knee.
It was a devastating injury.
West was out for the season.
The Lakers won the game, but they wouldn’t have the services of Jerry West for the playoffs.
West was so devastated that he stayed in the trainer’s room until all the press had left the building according to Milt Northrop who covered the game for the Buffalo News.
Without Jerry West, the Lakers were bounced by the Bucks in just 5 games in the Conference Finals a month later.
The 1971-72 Season
8 months after the knee injury, Jerry West was back to start the 1971-72 season.
Major changes had taken place in the interim.
The Lakers hired a new head coach - former Boston Celtics’ great Bill Sharman.
Sharman then asked Jerry West to become the team’s point guard. Sharman also instituted the morning shootaround, and convinced Wilt Chamberlain to get out of bed early to attend the shootarounds.
Sharman drilled the team hard in preparation for the season and instituted a fast-break running offense with Chamberlain and Happy Hairston clearing the boards and West driving the ball up court to guard Gail Goodrich, forward Elgin Baylor or 2nd year forward Jim McMillian, who was emerging as a great shooter.
The first 4 games went very well. The Lakers won all 4 by an average of over 21 points per game.
West had averaged just 18 points a game, playing point in those first 4 games, but he was shooting 56% and averaging over 6 assists a game.
Another Injury and Baylor’s Retirement
Then West got hurt again. He sprained his ankle and missed the next 5 games. The Lakers only won 2 of those 5 games.
West was back in the starting lineup on November 5, 1971 for a game at the Forum against the Bullets.
His running mate since West had joined the Lakers as a rookie in 1960 was not.
Elgin Baylor decided to call it a career 9 games into the 1971-72 season, after Bill Sharman had asked Elgin to relinquish his starting forward position to McMillian and come off the bench.
The Lakers won the first game of the post-Elgin era beating the Bullets behind 31 points from Goodrich, 25 rebounds by Chamberlain, and 19 points from West, who Sharman described as “tired,” to Mal Florence in the Los Angeles Times.
After the game, West talked to Florence about Baylor’s retirement, “I’m just thankful I had a chance to play with him. With him retiring, I begin to think that I’ll be there too, some day.”
The next game was number 10 on the West personal winning streak. He led the team with 28 points in a 16 point win over the Warriors.
The Laker’s 33 Game Team Winning Streak
And then things went off the charts. The Lakers were in the midst of their spectacular 33 game winning streak.
During the streak they didn’t just win games, they destroyed their opponents. Over the 33 games the average final score was 123 - 107.
The streak didn’t end until the Lakers played the defending champion Bucks in Milwaukee on Saturday, January 9, 1972 in a nationally televised game.
Coming into that game the Lakers had a season record of 39 - 3 and the Bucks were 35 - 8.
The Lakers had won their prior game in Atlanta by 44 points.
But on the Bucks home court, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar dominated the game scoring 39 points and grabbing 20 rebounds while the aging Chamberlain, playing all 48 minutes, could not contain the younger Jabbar and had just 15 points and 12 rebounds.
No one on the Lakers played well. West was 5 for 16 and Goodrich was 5 for 20.
The Bucks had a 5 point lead at halftime and extended it in the 2nd half to win it going away 120 - 104.
The streak had been stopped.
You can watch the game at this link:
Bucks Stop Lakers 33 Game Winning Streak
The broadcast featured the three greatest centers of all time:
Wilt Chamberlain of the Lakers (the NBA’s all time leading rebounder and #2 in career scoring average)
Kareem Abdul Jabbar of the Bucks (the NBA’s all time leading scorer)
Bill Russell, who was the TV analyst at courtside (the NBA’s greatest winner - 11 NBA titles with the Celtics)
After the Streak
After the game, none of the Lakers players talked to the press.
Coach Bill Sharman told Mal Florence in the Los Angeles Times, “I don’t want to take anything away from Milwaukee, but this is one of the weakest games we’ve played in a long time. However, in the long run, I think the defeat will help us.”
Sharman was right. As he had been about everything he did with the Lakers that season.
The Lakers finished out the season with a 69 - 13 record, the best in history up to that point.
And they went on to win the NBA Championship, for Jerry West’s first and only title.
And they won it convincingly going 12 - 3 in the playoffs, including 4 games to 1 over the Knicks in the Finals.
“Discovering” West’s 41 Game Personal Winning Streak
I learned about West’s 41 game personal winning streak quite by accident.
Two-and-a-half years ago, I was on a virtual sports time travel trip to Los Angeles. Whenever I’m in Los Angeles in 1972 I love reading the Los Angeles Times sports section because of their stellar sportswriters at that time, including the great columnist Jim Murray. Murray was always an excellent read.
The lead article in the sports pages of the January 10, 1972 issue of The Los Angeles Times was written by Mal Florence, the Lakers beat writer, about the game that ended the Lakers 33 game winning streak the prior night.
The headline covered the entire top of page 1 of the sports section. The article included this sentence in the last column on the right top of the page, “Jerry West, whose personal win streak ended at 41 games, threw the ball away several times and was 5 for 16 from the field (20 points).”
My eyes nearly popped off the page.
A personal win streak of 41 games!
I quickly did some research and determined that no one else on that Lakers team had more than a 33 game personal win streak - the exact duration of the team’s winning streak.
And a little more research revealed that nowhere in the annals of American professional team sports has anyone even approached a 41 game personal winning streak.
Jerry West stood all alone at the top.
No Mention of the 41 Game Personal Winning Streak
Aside from Mal Florence’s passing reference to the 41 game personal winning streak, I could not find a single other mention of it in any newspaper of that time or since then.
Back here in the present, I can not find any mention of it on the internet.
But it is simple for anyone to confirm its veracity by looking at the game logs for Jerry West in www.basketballreference.com
As soon as I learned about the 41 game personal winning streak, I contacted, Jonathan Coleman, co-author of Jerry West’s autobiography, to see what he knew about it.
Jonathan had not been previously aware of it, but he did a little research and told me that it was mentioned in the unauthorized biography of Jerry West written by Roland Lazenby in 2010.
I purchased a copy of that book and sure enough on page 320 there is this sentence, “Because West had missed the Lakers’ first three losses due to injury, he had played in 41 consecutive victories, a record that surely no pro player can ever touch.”
I then wrote to Jonathan that this record needs to be celebrated - right up there with Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak.
He wrote back to me, “I think your point, that it should be recognized second to DiMaggio, is an interesting one.”
This was in early 2022, several months before I started publishing The Sports Time Traveler™. I had no outlet to share the news about this record that almost no one knows about.
When Jerry West passed away last week I felt the best way I could honor his memory of Jerry West was to publish an article in this newsletter.
My hope is that perhaps this will help change the narrative about Jerry West, from a guy who lost the big one over and over again, to a player who did something so special that it’s never been approached, in any sport, in 50+ years.
The Legacy of the 41 Game Personal Winning Streak
I think the 41 game personal winnings streak is an astonishing record that deserves wider recognition.
It should be right up there with the most revered streaks in sports history:
Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak
Cal Ripken, Jr.- 2,632 consecutive games played
Wayne Gretzky- 51 consecutive games with a point
The biggest difference between what Jerry West did, and the streaks noted above, is that West’s streak was about actually winning - which is the whole objective of playing sports in the first place.
We play sports to win.
Yes, there are lots of other benefits. But a famous football coach once said, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”
If winning is the most important thing in sports, then the player who holds the record for the most consecutive games won must be considered something very special.
POSTSCRIPT
After initially writing this article I watched the video of Jonathan Coleman being interviewed on Scripps TV after Jerry West had died. You can watch it at this link:
Jonathan Coleman Talks Legacy of Jerry West (youtube.com)
I had the thought after watching the interview that we can derive a great lesson from the life of Jerry West. It's important to learn from your losses, but then dismiss them so they don't torment you and prevent you from celebrating your wins.
Sadly, Jerry West, who has one of the greatest records in pro sports history, could never recover from the grief of losing the NBA Finals every time he played the Celtics.
I also wonder how much West’s life would have changed, and the torment of the losses been diminished or eliminated completely, if not for one missed shot by a teammate. In the game 7 of the 1962 NBA Finals against the Celtics (the first time the Lakers met the Celtics in the Jerry West era), Frank Selvy of the Lakers had an open mid-range jump shot along the baseline that could have won game 7. He missed and the Celtics won in overtime. Might that miss, which West had absolutely no control over, have changed everything for Jerry West if it had simply gone in the basket. By the way, Frank Selvy was a great shooter. He had once scored 100 points in a college game.
Please share this story as a way of honoring the memory of Jerry West.
Thanks for reading.
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