Lakers all-time starting five – Shooting guard: Jerry West (1965-66)
Stat line: 31.3 PPG / 7.1 RPG / 6.1 APG
My third selection is The Logo himself, Jerry West. On the previous page, I alluded to toying with the idea of a Wilt Chamberlain/Kobe Bryant pairing at the Center/Shooting Guard position.
However, I think the difference in skill between prime Jerry West and Kobe Bryant is smaller than the gulf between past-his-prime Wilt and peak Shaquille O’Neal, so this configuration nets me the stronger overall lineup.
My vision for the all-time Los Angeles Lakers roster should now be apparent. I’m prioritizing a vicious blend of ball movement, scoring, and defense, so that in a hypothetical five-on-five with a rival franchises all-time roster, any one of my players is a threat to score. Jerry West just so happens to fit that vision better than Kobe would’ve, with a career assist average of 6.7 per game.
The other reason I selected Jerry West was for his floor spacing. Despite playing in the NBA before the existence of the three-point line, it’s widely accepted that West is one of the best long-range shooters in NBA history.
Although I don’t know the methodology behind it, one such simulation pegs him as a career 42.9% three-point shooter. An old Bleacher Report article (before the rise of the Splash Brothers and the explosion of three-point shooting in the NBA) listed West as the third-best three-point shooter of all time.
Whether you completely agree with the arguments presented by external sources is one thing, but Jerry West being an elite shooter is indisputable, making him a perfect fit on my all-time team.
Why I chose this version of him?
Unfortunately, the NBA didn’t track steals until Jerry West’s last season in 1973-74, where he averaged a whopping 2.6 per game (tied second in the league, had he played enough games to qualify for the leaderboard). However, contrary to conventional wisdom (which dictates a player’s defensive aptitude usually peaks earlier in a player’s career), West’s Defensive Win Shares actually increased in his thirties.
However, those same advanced stats state that West’s best overall season in terms of Win Shares peaked in 1965-66, with 17.13 being the 54th most by a player in a single season. Furthermore, one of the models referenced above projected Jerry West as shooting 43.7% from three that season, an especially impressive number when you factor in the degree of difficulty of the shots he’d routinely take.
West finished second in the MVP voting that season behind Wilt Chamberlain and led the Lakers to the NBA finals, falling to the Boston Celtics in a 7 game thriller. For that series, West averaged a herculean 33.9 PPG / 6.4 RPG / 5.1 APG on .515/.875 shooting splits, with very little help from his teammates. For those playoffs as a whole, his numbers are even more impressive: 34.2 PPG / 6.3 RPG / 5.6 APG on .518/.872 splits across 14 games.
Fortunately for The Logo, instead of having Elgin Baylor shoot less than 40% from the field, he has the ultra-efficient Shaq alleviating a significant amount of the offensive load from him.
In my all-time team, West would have more open looks than he ever had in his NBA career, whether it be from crisp ball-movement from Magic, or from Shaq kicking the ball out when double-teamed. It would truly be a pick-your-poison type of situation for opposing defenses.
With the floor-spacing of West, the low-post dominance of Shaq, and the ball-wizardry of Magic, my next piece needs to be an incredibly high-IQ player, who gives my all-time an added dimension as a scorer.