He played professionally for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA), and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time.

He then embarked on a 14-year career with the Lakers and was the co-captain of the 1960 U.S. Olympic gold medal team, a squad that was inducted as a unit into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010.

[10][13] Growing up, West spent his days hunting and fishing, but his main activity was shooting at a basketball hoop that a neighbor had nailed to his storage shed.

West spent days shooting baskets from every possible angle, ignoring mud and snow in the backyard, as well as his mother's whippings when he came home hours late for dinner.

West won Schaus's trust and, alternating with Hundley, Selvy, and Leonard, played 35 minutes per game and established himself as the Lakers' second scoring option.

[20] After ending the regular season with 49 wins, L.A. played the Baltimore Bullets in the first round of the 1965 NBA Playoffs, but then team captain Baylor suffered a career-threatening knee injury.

[20] Winning 45 games, the Lakers beat the St. Louis Hawks in a close seven-game series, and yet again met the Boston Celtics in the 1966 NBA Finals.

[40] The 52 wins were accumulated despite West playing only 51 regular season games due to injury[27] and scoring 26.3 points, the lowest average since his rookie year: after being a First-Teamer for six times en bloc, he only made the All-NBA Second Team.

[44] In the 1969 NBA Playoffs, the 55-win Lakers defeated the Atlanta Hawks and the San Francisco Warriors, setting up the sixth finals series versus Boston in eight years.

Before Game 1, West privately complained to Bill Russell of exhaustion, but then the Lakers guard scored 53 points on Boston in a close two-point win.

[46] In Game 7, Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke had put up thousands of balloons in the rafters of the Forum in Los Angeles.

[46] After the loss West was seen as the ultimate tragic hero: after the game, Bill Russell held his hand, and John Havlicek said: "I love you, Jerry".

[50] More frustration awaited West in Game 5, when Reed pulled his thigh muscle and seemed out for the series; instead of capitalizing on a double-digit lead and reeling off an easy win, the Lakers committed 19 second-half turnovers, and the two main scorers Chamberlain and West shot the ball only three and two times, respectively, in the entire second half and lost 107–100 in what was called one of the greatest comebacks in NBA Finals history.

West had also injured his right hand and taken several manual injections,[48] and Reed hobbled up court before Game 7: the Knicks center scored the first four points, and inspired his team to one of the most famous playoff upsets of all time.

[51] With his injured hands, West still hit nine of his 19 shots, but was outplayed by Walt Frazier, who scored 36 points and 19 assists and was credited with several crucial steals on Lakers guard Dick Garrett.

After losing Elgin Baylor to an Achilles tendon rupture that effectively ended his career, West himself injured his knee and was out for the season; the short-handed Lakers lost the Western Conference Finals in five games to the championship-bound Milwaukee Bucks, who were led by freshly-crowned Most Valuable Player Lew Alcindor (later known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and veteran Hall-of-Fame guard Oscar Robertson.

However, in his last season West only played 14 minutes in the playoffs, due to rumored contractual frustration with Jack Kent Cooke and groin injuries.

In three years, he led the Lakers and star center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to a 145–101 record, making the playoffs all three seasons and reaching the Western Conference finals in 1977.

[67] Those championship-winning Lakers were coached by Pat Riley, and featured superstar players Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy.

After a slump in the early 1990s, West rebuilt the team of coach Del Harris around center Vlade Divac, forward Cedric Ceballos, and guard Nick Van Exel, which won 48 games, and went to the Western Conference semifinals.

[73] On May 19, 2011, West joined the Golden State Warriors as an executive board member, reporting directly to new owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber.

On June 1, 2017, West publicly stated that he would have been interested in returning to the Lakers, but nothing materialized as they hired Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka to run the team.

[10] He had a jump shot with a release the NBA lauded as "lightning quick", and was known for making baskets late in the game, earning him the nickname "Mr.

[10] Having played forward early in his career, he was also a capable rebounder, and gifted with long arms, quick hands, and strong defensive instincts.

He was also described as one of the best ballhawks, man-to-man defenders and shot blockers among NBA guards:[28] when the All-Defensive Teams were introduced in 1969, he made every one of them until his career ended in 1974.

Regarding his shyness, WVU roommate Jody Gardner testified that West never dated in his entire freshman year, and Lakers coach Fred Schaus once recalled two weeks when his guard never said a word.

He spoke with a high-pitched voice that became even shriller when he became excited so that Lakers captain Elgin Baylor dubbed West "Tweety Bird".

During an interview on HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, West revealed that as a child he was the victim of physical abuse from his father and has suffered from depression ever since.

[105][106] West was portrayed in the 2022 HBO docudrama series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty as a temperamental, foul-mouthed executive, prone to angry outbursts and mood swings.

On April 19, 2022, West demanded a retraction from the network within two weeks for the "cruel" and "deliberately false" depiction, as played by actor Jason Clarke.