Lakernoise

Former Lakers and WVU coach Fred Schaus has passed away. In his honor I’m excerpting a part of my new book, Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon, from ESPN Books:

One clue to Jerry West leapt out at me from a 50-year-old photograph, both comical and telling in its intensity. The photo is from signing day, 1956. Local high school star Jerry West is signing to play college basketball with West Virginia University. There have been literally thousands of photographs taken of West over the decades, yet this is the one, found in the long-ago pages of a small Mountain State newspaper, that says so much about who he is and the family chemistry that wrapped him so tightly and made him, to use his own words, “so crazy.”

He’s standing there with his parents, Howard and Cecile West, and WVU’s handsome young coach, Fred Schaus. Of the four, there are two sets of eyes that emit the same quiet fury. Their energy and indignation are absolutely radioactive. Mother and son, eyes burning like Blake’s tiger, obviously share something unspeakable, something far away and deeply troubling. The occasion should have been joyous. Just weeks earlier West had experienced what he has often described as one of the true moments of delight in his entire life — leading his East Bank High School team to the state basketball championship. But here he is, still buzzing at his success, and yet as the shutter snaps his eyes radiate this stern message: this is no time to smile, not even a goofy 18-year-old, I-rule-the-world-in-this-moment sort of grin. For mother and son, the visages are fixed fiercely, because there are things to be done. Houses to be cleaned. Clothes to be washed. Porches to be swept. Shots to be hoisted. Games to be won. Discontent to be nurtured. Unhappiness to be endured.

His face reflecting immense parental pride, Howard West poses there with his wife and son, enjoying this moment seemingly in ignorance of just how alienated he is from both of them. The elder West, a non-descript guy in the slightly worn suit of a 1950s working man, was said to be a nice person, one who had survived a harsh upbringing to become a community figure known for his warm deeds toward friends and neighbors. Yet there is something deep within him that is profoundly unfulfilled, something almost sinister that neither he nor his family can ever quite contend with.

On his father’s side, Jerry West’s English ancestors landed at Jamestown, and later helped settle the wild, bloody frontier that would become West Virginia. Yet this photograph suggests just how much of his persona Jerry West drew from his mother. Cecile Sue was a Creasy, a forthright clan that settled in West Virginia’s magnificent Kanawha Valley in the 19^th century, hearty people who made their living on the keelboats that hauled salt and other goods along the Kanawha River down to the Ohio.

With his long frame and 38-inch arms, West would seem to have been right at home amongst the keel-haulers, pushing and pulling those boats in the hearty, hard-scrabble milieu along the river a century earlier. Like the keel-haulers before him, the brooding and sullen young man in the picture appears preoccupied with the constant and distressing need to find a place to employ his seemingly boundless energy.

“I’ve always been a nervous person,” West would admit many times. In fact, his restlessness before games is almost as legendary as his jump shot.

He and his mother would share a psyche often driven to distraction by this nervous energy. Later in life, this no-nonsense woman would greet warmly the occasional strangers who traveled to the family home in the little village of Chelyan (Shill-yan) to worship her son. She would serve cold home-made lemonade and even pull out scrapbooks to revisit his glory days. But, beyond such moments, there was little charm about Jerry West’s mother.

Patience was not her virtue, nor was it her son’s. An unadulterated demand for perfection was their shared burden. The mother saw it in her son at an early age, because she recognized it in herself.

“He’s always wanted perfection,” she would confide to sportswriter Bill Libby in 1969. “I think he’s come closer to it than most. But I doubt he’s satisfied. He’s still the boy he always was, who wants to be perfect and just can’t understand why he can’t be.”

The expectation of perfection is a gnarly and contentious quality, impossible to endure yet essential to greatness. It is the central quality in basketball’s select few, the truly great players, according to Tex Winter, who coached basketball brilliantly for six decades and intensely followed every detail of the game in the process. “That’s the one thing about those rare players like Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan and Jerry West and Oscar Robertson—they want to be the best and they are never satisfied with anything less. That’s what makes them what they are. They’re all very complex.”

Such complexity would remain the core of West’s anxious persona his entire life. At age 70, reflecting on his career and trying to explain it, he said, “I’d like to see a perfect world in basketball. It’s not perfect, and that drives me crazy.”

His approach also drove those around him somewhat crazy. Standing there with the Wests on that signing day in 1956, was Schaus, the man who would share so much of West’s life yet never quite gain his full confidence. The coach was smiling and relaxed in this moment of victory. He had just signed the state’s best player, this scarecrow of a forward he had watched perform brilliantly in West Virginia’s high school tournament. Months earlier, Schaus had scouted those tournament games with Hot Rod Hundley, his varsity star at the university, and he had pointed out to Hundley two high school players that he liked, one a big man, the other this energetic but thin forward.

“The other one’s a nice player,” Hundley told his coach. “But if you have to pick one of them, get the skinny one.”

Schaus had done just that, and in so doing his had set in motion the karma that would define both his life and West’s.

Schaus would coach West for nine straight seasons, three at West Virginia University, six with the Lakers, a phenomenal stretch of almost one thousand games. Then he would serve as general manager for five more Lakers teams that West captained. More than anything, they would share an unrivaled frustration.

They would lose the 1959 NCAA championship by a point to the University of California team coached by Newell. In Los Angeles, Schaus, West, Elgin Baylor, and their Lakers faced the confounding Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics six times for the league championship in the 1960s. Six times West and the Lakers lost. Each time they watched as Celtics boss Red Auerbach lit up his victory cigar and hooted.

“There were an awful lot of times I wanted to shove that cigar down his throat,” Fred Schaus once told me.

Jerry West’s statement on the passing of Fred Schaus:

Jerry West:

“Fred’s passing brings finality to a relationship that began in 1955, when he first came to our house to introduce himself as the coach of West Virginia University. He explained to me that he thought that WVU would be the place for me to attend school and have an opportunity to play basketball. At that point in my life, he was the first coach to show interest in me. I was thrilled beyond words and to this day, I remember much about our meeting. Little did I know what a long-lasting relationship we would have.”

“We shared many incredible experiences, both joyous and painful, during our years together at WVU and then as my coach with the Los Angeles Lakers. As a young man with little experience with the outside world, he became my mentor and sounding board as I progressed as an athlete and as a person.”

“Fred was a humble, spirited competitor and his passion for winning and excellence were qualities about him that I admired. He led a full life. His family and friends were his most important focus during the times that I was closest to him. Fred’s legacy was one of bringing great prominence to West Virginia basketball and in Los Angeles to bringing the Lakers to the attention of all basketball fans.”

“During his period of illness, I had the opportunity to spend some time with Fred and found that he still had that smile and his personality never seemed to change. He will be missed by all who know and love him, especially Barbara and his children. We have lost a great man and for me personally, someone who was so instrumental in my life. I will be forever grateful that he showed a special interest during my formidable years at the university and also his during my very difficult transition to professional basketball. For all of us fortunate enough to have been associated with Fred, he made our lives fuller and had great influence on our successes regardless of where they led us.”