When I was growing up in NYC, I was not a basketball fan. I mean, can you blame me? All I had were the Knicks.

Then I moved to LA in 1985, and started watching a little team called the Lakers. This team was brilliant. It was fierce. It was loaded with talent. It was flashy and entertaining and wondrous. And it was put together by a guy from West Virginia, who, like me, was a transplant to this place of sun and possibility.

RIP Jerry West. You will forever be one of the greats.