My Chat with Mr. Clutch (aka The Logo)

Meeting Jerry West at Camp Wahoo

Absolute basketball icon, Jerry West, died not long ago at the age of 86.  That’s a good long run.  There’s nothing I can say that will add to the tsunami of accolades, all well-earned, that have followed his death.

Jerry West was an impeccable player of basketball.

All I can do here is offer a minor account of a brief encounter I had long ago with the player they called Mr. Clutch.  The guy who—for God’s sake—got turned into the NBA logo.

In the summer of 1970, right after my sophomore year at Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut, I flew down to Charlottesville, Virginia to go to a basketball camp called, of all things, Camp Wahoo.  (If you’re interested, Wahoo is a University of Virginia thing.)  I remember riding a bus down I-95 at 5 o’clock in the morning to catch an early flight out of JFK Airport.  My only piece of luggage was a gym bag filled with socks, shorts, t-shirts, and jock-straps (which were still a thing back then).  New York was having one of its famous temperature inversions, so the sun was rising extremely red on the murky horizon.  A weather report came over the radio announcing that currently in New York City, at 5 a.m. mind you, the temperature was 100 degrees and the humidity was at 100%.

The bus driver shook his head, whistled loudly, and spoke for us all: “Oh, Lordy!”

In spite of the goofy name, Camp Wahoo in the 1960s and 1970s was one of the best basketball camps on the east coast.  It was run at a place called the Miller School, which seemed to be some kind of military academy.  The place was all red brick, ancient, and falling apart.  We slept rough in what looked (and smelled) like barracks.  The food was bad.  Most of the morning and afternoon training sessions were held outside on crappy asphalt courts in the sweltering Virginia heat and humidity.  In the evenings, we played three or four full-court games in our “camp teams” the coaches had divided us up into.  Most of those were played outside, too.  Under dim floodlights and swarms of mosquitoes.

In short, I was in basketball heaven for a week.

The competition was great.  At that camp, I played against several kids I’d wind up playing against in college.  Because I was one of the few guys at camp not from the south, my nickname for the week became “Connecticut.”  I loved it.  Everywhere I went, everyone called me “Connecticut.”  All the coaches and all the campers.  Even the nice ladies in the dining hall started asking me, as they dished out the various glops on offer, “Connecticut, honey, what you want to eat tonight?”

And, in the midst of all this basketball splendor, there was yet to come the very best basketball thing of all: the fact that Jerry West was a regular guest at Camp Wahoo.

I’m not sure how it started or why Jerry West liked to come hang out at Camp Wahoo for a while in the summers.  All that mattered was that he did.  And OMG how we campers were waiting for it.  There was no bigger star in the NBA.

Jerry West showed up near the end of my week-long session.  Suddenly he was just there, out on the crappy asphalt courts with us watching our morning and afternoon drills.  Out there again in the evening to watch the run-of-play of our full-court games.  He didn’t butt in on any of the sessions or games to say anything.  He just listened closely to what the coaches were telling us.  It struck me that Jerry West simply wanted to be there.  Soaking up the intense and elemental b-ball atmosphere.  He wasn’t at all aloof.  He’d talk and joke with everybody.  But he seemed intent on not standing out in any way.

For me, the highlight of Camp Wahoo was Jerry West giving a talk on shooting.  As a final afternoon session, the entire camp was herded into the dilapidated gym of the Miller School.  We sat packed in the rickety bleachers, sweaty and smelly from our first couple of afternoon sessions.  When Jerry West walked out onto the court, basketball perched on his hip under one arm, you could hear a pin drop.  He was dressed to play ball, and he started his instruction.

But first a bit of background information.  At this point in my budding hoops career, I was in the midst of overhauling my shot.  Growing up, I’d developed kind of a crazy shooting motion where I’d pull the ball way back behind my head before letting it fly.  That worked okay for shots around the basket up to maybe 10 feet out—but not so much for 15- or 20-footers.  I needed a change in the worst way.

The summer before going to Camp Wahoo, I went to Willis Reed’s All-Star Camp.  (That, too, happened at a run-down military school, this one just up the Hudson Valley from NYC.)  Not only did Willis Reed run the camp himself, not only were there lots of pro players (especially my beloved Knicks) working the camp for the whole week, but who showed up one afternoon to give a special guest lecture on shooting?

Dollar Bill.  None other than Bill Bradley.  My unparalleled hoops hero and role model. 

Now, with any shooting instruction comes a lot of the same basic advice.  And that’s fine and to be expected.  When that advice is coming from amazing shooters like Bill Bradley and Jerry West, though...well...the impact is entirely different.  It’s like taking beginning piano lessons from Mozart.  Not only do they give you the basics—keep that elbow in and at a right-angle; don’t let your support hand interfere with your shooting hand—but you listen for the little genius tips only they can offer.  With Dollar Bill these were: 1) all the power for your shot should come from your legs—not from your arm trying to fling the ball at the rim; 2) the shooting motion of your wrist should be the same motion your hand and wrist make when you throw a dart.

Mind-blowing.

And now, one summer later, I had the golden opportunity to add Mr. Clutch as an architect of my new shot.

One thing Jerry West emphasized was placing the ball, at the apex of your shot, just above your head and just in front of your forehead.  That positioning, at the moment before you shot it, helped keep the ball out of the reach of defenders.  (Remember, this was the era of the pull-up jumper—before the satanic 3-point shot came into play—so shooting from your bellybutton was not yet in vogue.)

Another thing Jerry West stressed—and this was something I’d really never thought about before—was the best way to miss a shot.  Here’s what he meant by that initially baffling statement.  You should only ever miss a shot long—and here he demonstrated by bonking the ball (from 20 feet out) off the back of the rim—or short—so he bonked a shot off the front of the rim (again, from 20 feet out).  Never, he said, should you miss a shot to the right—he demonstrated—or to the left—he demonstrated again (both of these shots also from 20 feet out).  Why?  Because missing wide meant your basic mechanics were off and your form needed adjustments.

More mind-blowing craftsmanship.

Mind you, these four shots that Jerry West missed intentionally, to make his point, were the only shots he missed during his entire talk.  For about 45 minutes, he shot constantly while talking to us about shooting.  With a coach rebounding for him (meaning just standing under the basket catching the ball as it came out of the net), Jerry West moved around the perimeter, about 20 feet out, circling from corner to corner then back again, shooting shot after shot after shot after shot.

And never missing.

It was the most amazing basketball thing I’ve ever seen in my life of witnessing a lot of basketball things.

But that’s not even the best part.  To conclude his talk, Jerry West offered a shooting tip that would change my basketball life.  The tip was simple.  Almost a Duh.  But it served as the cement, I could tell, of his whole philosophy and approach to shooting a basketball.  His tip was this:

Stare at the front of the rim and get the ball just over it.

When shooting, that’s all you’ve got to do.  That’s all you’ve got to think about.  The front of the rim.  Nothing else.  Keep your eyes locked on it until the ball goes through the net.  Don’t let your eyes wander upward to follow the flight of the ball.

Just keep staring at the front of the rim.

As far as I could tell, then, that was the sum of shooting for Jerry West.  Like a fine technician, train your body to perform flawless shooting mechanics.  Like a Zen master, clear your mind to stare at the front of the rim.  Both tasks might sound easy enough, but all basketball players know how these are hard-won habits.  Neither one is easy to acquire.  Let alone to master.  But this talk by Jerry West placed me squarely on my shooting path and set me resolutely on my basketball quest.  And for those things I am most grateful—even if that quest never took me as far as I hoped.

Yet my finding secret shooting knowledge is not even the best part or the real point of this story.

My week at Camp Wahoo was over.  I was in the Charlottesville airport early in the morning waiting to catch my flight to JFK.  The airport was busy.  Full of businessmen scurrying to make their important business trip connections.  I was standing out of the way by a big picture window, watching jets land and take-off.  I was wearing scruffy levis, my new Camp Wahoo t-shirt (my only clean one left), and canvas Cons sweated dull yellow.  At my feet was my gym bag.  Zipped tight.  Full of stinky socks and shorts and t-shirts and jock-straps.  Propped on top of my bag (because I didn’t want to put it inside to get it stinky) was the small plastic trophy I’d won.  The little plaque glued slightly off-kilter onto its hollow base read: Free-Throw Champ, Camp Wahoo 1970.

I know the reason I’d won was because, every shot, I kept my eyes staring at the front of the rim.

I felt someone walk up behind me.  I heard a soft-spoken voice say, “Well, hey there, Connecticut.  You on your way home?”  I turned around.  Yep, you got it.  It was Jerry West.

Talking to me.

Suddenly, I could feel the eyes of every businessman standing nearby enviously upon at me.  Why on earth, I sensed their thinking, was Jerry West talking to some scraggly dumbass kid when he should be talking to important businessman me?

I could only guess that Jerry West remembered me from the closing events of camp the night before.  First there were the final few rounds of the Free-Throw Shooting Contest (where I pretty much blew the competition away).  Then there was the camp All-Star Game (in which I shot and played really well).  Jerry West smiled as he jutted his long chin down at my trophy.  “Nice shooting last night,” he said.

I don’t know how my brain didn’t explode.

I wish I could relate to you a detailed account of our conversation.  A conversation in which I was cool and jocular.  You know, like it was no big deal for me to be shooting the breeze with the biggest star in the NBA.  But, honestly, my chat with Jerry West is a blur.  Not because of the remove of time, but because I was overwhelmed.  Even though it lasted about 15 minutes, I can remember only the broad strokes of what we talked about.  That and the general manner and tenor of Jerry West.

First of all, he was the nicest guy on earth and extremely down-to-earth.  Jerry West asked me where home was.  He asked me how my high school team was looking for next season.  He asked me if I was hoping to play college ball.  In other words, he truly wanted to converse.  I asked him the dumb question of what it was like to play in the NBA.  (But I really wanted to know.)  He didn’t give me a pat answer.  He said he got tired of all the traveling and being away from home so much.  He said the pressure could really get to you, if you let it.  I almost had the impression that he wasn’t entirely pleased with his career choice.

That made me think.

Finally, still keeping all those businessmen at bay, we commiserated a bit over our mutual dislike of the Celtics.  Him because the Lakers lost so often to Boston in the Finals.  Me because the Celtics were the Eastern Conference arch-rivals of my Knicks.  We did agree, though, that John Havlicek was one hell of a player, even if he had no left hand.  Then both our flights were called.  Me back up to JFK.  Jerry West back out to LAX.

And that was my chat with Mr. Clutch, aka The Logo.

I don’t have a “So what?” big finish for this post.  What got me writing it was my surprise at being so shaken by the news of Jerry West’s death.  I was more than passing sad to hear of it.  The news rattled me a bit.  Triggered a sense of my own personal loss, like someone close to me was gone.  Why?

Of course, my encounter with Jerry West at Camp Wahoo, all those years ago, played a big part in my reaction.  Our airport conversation in particular made a huge impression on me.  Likely, part of my emotional response to the news was a “Send not to know for whom the bell tolls” moment as well.  One with a basketball edge to it.  It’s sobering to see an elder hoopster fall.  Yet there’s something more still.

Basketball was the first thing in my life that I decided to do.  That I wanted to get good at.  No one told me to play hoops or that I needed to pursue it bloody-mindedly.  Those choices were all me.  As such, basketball was the first discipline I learned.  And, in learning it, I learned how to acquire a discipline.  How to go about figuring out the way to do something accurately and well.  The time it takes.  The understanding it takes.  The practice it takes.  Learning how to learn, knowing how to know, is among the most valuable experiences you can have.  And one the sooner done the better.

Thus, if I had to put my finger on it, I’d characterize what’s written above as a tribute, as a lament, and, most of all, as a thank you to a Master of my formative discipline.  Someone who helped me learn how to know how to do.

COMING IN TWO WEEKS: hmm...good question...

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