National Basketball Association

Jerry West explains why he once wanted to leave the Lakers for the Knicks

Published Nov. 15, 2016 3:04 p.m. ET

Andrew Lynch

NBA legend Jerry West is one of the all-time Lakers greats. Along with guys like Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant, he personifies the sense of loyalty that comes with playing for such a prestigious franchise. And if he'd possessed more control over his playing days, West would have abandoned all of it to head to the Big Apple.

That's according to The Logo himself, who joined Jim Rome earlier this week in part to discuss the Golden State Warriors' acquisition of Kevin Durant. In mentioning Durant's freedom as a player, West reminded the audience that he never experienced free agency -- which turned out for the best.

The Knicks would have been a particularly compelling choice for West. By the time Jack Kent Cooke purchased the Lakers in 1965, West was entering his sixth season without a ring. Los Angeles fell off a bit over the next few seasons, getting swept out of the playoffs in 1967 as West battled leg injuries. West, then, might have wanted to join New York even before the Knicks won the 1969-70 NBA title.

The league would have played out much differently had West joined the Knicks for the 1967-68 campaign, of course. Clyde Frazier was still a season away from taking over as New York's primary ballhandler; would West's arrival have slowed Frazier's ascent, or would the two instead have gone down as one of the greatest backcourts of all-time?

The Lakers, meanwhile, likely would have continued a championship drought stretching back to 1954, when the team was still in Minneapolis. Who knows if Wilt Chamberlain would have come to Los Angeles prior to the 1968-69 season with West in New York -- which means in this alternate universe, Chamberlain probably has one championship, not two. And with his loyalty to the team cast aside, West himself almost certainly doesn't coach the Lakers after retiring, pulling the team out of a (then-unprecedented) two-year run without reaching the postseason.

Although the NBA adopted some small measure of "free agency" in 1976, shortly after West retired, true unrestricted free agency would not come about until 1988. Such restrictive rules have always been unfair to the players. In this instance (and many others), such a draconian labor agreement also shaped the NBA as we know it.