NBA INSIDE LOOK: IT'S WEST ON LOGO, ISN'T IT? EVERYONE THINKS SO, BUT NBA WON'T SAY.Byline: Kevin Modesti Staff Writer Nobody symbolizes his sport as literally as does Jerry West
abbr. 1. National Basketball Association 2. National Boxing Association NBA (US) n abbr (= National Basketball Association) → Basketball-Dachverband (= logo. Or so almost every basketball fan believes. What you might not know is that the NBA doesn't actually say it's West on the logo. In fact, the league office seems to get defensive when the subject is raised. An NBA publicist pub·li·cist n. One who publicizes, especially a press or publicity agent. publicist Noun a person, such as a press agent or journalist, who publicizes something publicist said last week that the image of a man dribbling left-handed on the run is ``an artist's rendering'' not intended to represent any individual. Asked for documentation to prove it is or isn't West, the publicist phoned back minutes later to say he found nothing in the NBA records  This article may be too long.Please discuss this issue on the talk page and help summarize or split the content into subarticles of an article series. that described the logo's origin. Could he at least look at old NBA publications to see when the logo first appeared? ``We'll try and see if we can give it a shot,'' he said. He hasn't called back yet. The logo apparently debuted in the early 1970s. That was at the zenith of West's on-the-court legend. It sure looks like West. Put it this way: It sure doesn't look like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar For the football player, see . Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr. on April 16, 1947) is a retired American professional basketball player and current assistant coach. . But the NBA publicist said the idea that it's West is ``sort of an urban myth.'' If it's a myth, that's news to the nation's newspapers, which never hesitate to include the West-as-logo item in articles about the Lakers' executive vice president. ``When the players take the floor (for the NBA Finals The NBA Finals is the championship series of the National Basketball Association. The team winning the Eastern Conference Finals earns one of the two berths in the championship round, with the other going to the team that wins the Western Conference Finals. ), they'll be wearing the official NBA logo on their uniforms. The player pictured dribbling the ball with his left hand? Jerry West,'' the New York Daily News New York Daily News Morning daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. It was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson and his cousin Robert McCormick as a subsidiary of the Tribune Co. of Chicago. The first successful tabloid-format newspaper in the U.S. said in June. ``He did so well . . . in a Hall of Fame career that the National Basketball Asociation put his silhouette on its logo,'' The Wall Street Journal said in February 1998. ``The league won't officially recognize that it's him,'' said Lakers publicity director John Black. ``But we all know it's him.'' If West is retiring, and if the NBA has any thought of honoring one of its greatest players and executives, a good way might be to admit he is the sport's original model citizen. |
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