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Jerry West Best Signing the Los Angeles Clippers Have Made in Years

Clippers fans will rue the fact they failed to bring West in earlier.

By Myles StedmanPublished 7 years ago 3 min read
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The 2017-18 season is going to be interesting for the Los Angeles Clippers, as they embark on the uncertainty of the post-Chris Paul era.

No one is quite sure where Los Angeles is headed; they still have front court duo Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan, and have finally filled the void at small forward with hot-scoring Danilo Gallinari.

Also heading to LA via CSKA Moscow is Milos Teodosic, the man they’ve called "the Serbian Steve Nash," and "Lights Out Lou" Williams, both providing backcourt flair.

However, perhaps the most underrated and best addition the Clippers have made this offseason is another guard — one who’s been retired for almost 45 years, and played for the team across town.

Jerry West returns to the City of Angels with the Clips’, after leaving the Los Angeles Lakers in 2002, where he built eight championships — five in the 1980s and three in the '00s.

From there, he traded Angeltown for the Memphis Grizzlies, where he built another contender, albeit one that did not win a championship.

For his efforts, he left Memphis with a second Executive of the Year Award, handing over the reigns in 2007, age 69.

In 2011, he took up a post with the Golden State Warriors as an "executive board member," reportedly a direct advisory role to owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber.

With all his prior success, it would be hard to believe West was not an influential figure in Golden State’s most recent run.

All his achievements in toe, West returns to the city where he first and most notoriously made his fame, but is he arriving a handful of years late?

At age 79, West still knows his basketball. The sport is such that, for as much as it changes, it stays the same just as much. West’s thoughts and theories on building a winner will be relevant until the day he dies.

However, what if West had come straight from the Grizzlies to Los Angeles, arriving at the same time as Paul? West is a brilliant addition to this Clippers’ organization, but is it all too late?

Of course not. Hell, the subtraction of Doc Rivers from the front office is almost as valuable as the addition of West.

For whatever West achieves in La-la Land the second time around, it’s hard to imagine Clips’ fans won’t rue the fact he arrived in 2017, and not 2007.

Alas, there’s never a bad time to have good basketball minds in your organization — better late than never, as they say.

As mentioned, Los Angeles is an unsure entity this year — one that does not yet have West’s fingerprints on it.

We’re fairly certain they won’t be the regular season dominatrix they have been in previous years, but we’re not so sure they’ll be in the Conference easy beats either.

What we do know is, in stark contrast to recent years, this franchise will value its draft picks more. A Jerry West team invests highly into each pick made, valuing each as if it were a number one.

However, that’s about all we know. How much playoffs life is left in this team is not known.

West, along with the new basketball operations team, headed by Dave Wohl, will have to find out, in order to shape the team’s direction.

West will likely play a large part, as he always has, and it’s a shame he wasn’t doing so sooner.

basketball
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About the Creator

Myles Stedman

Journalist at Rugby.com.au | NEAFL media team

Contributor at Zero Tackle, RealSport, The Unbalanced, FanSided, Last Word on Hockey and SB Nation.

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