3. Gail Goodrich
Gail Goodrich was the second superstar on the only championship team that Jerry West played for, the 1971-1972 Los Angeles Lakers. Infamously, West went 1-8 in the NBA Finals, with the lone win coming with Goodrich as his second star.
If you surveyed 100 random Laker fans about who the second star was to Jerry West then the most common answer would have either been Elgin Baylor or Wilt Chamberlain. Baylor was phenomenal in his career and while Chamberlain was not as dominant when he was a Laker, he was still Wilt Chamberlain.
Both players were on this team but neither were the second star. This was Baylor’s last year of his career and he only played nine games for the Lakers and while Wilt could still get a basket when needed and was a reliable rim protector he was not the dominating player that he was earlier in his career.
Instead, the second-best player on the team was Gail Goodrich, who actually led the team in scoring, edging out Jerry West in points per game by 0.1 points.
Goodrich and West created one of the best backcourts in NBA history and arguably the greatest backcourt in league history to that point.
Chamberlain was ironically the NBA Finals MVP as he put together a phenomenal showing, averaging almost 19.4 points and 23.2 points per game. Despite his fantastic showing in the playoffs, Goodrich’s year-round production, as well as the fact that he still averaged over 25 points in the Finals with great defense, made him the team’s second star on a team full of legends.