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By Christopher Witflee
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The player silhouetted on the NBA's logo is supposed to represent all that is right, good and triumphant in the game. He's the league's faceless face, its abstract particular, its defining form and essence before a larger public. He is the brand.
In ancient times, it's often said, a free man strived for virtue. In later centuries, it became faith, then enlightenment. In this new century, which still lives off the old one, which runs by the electronic mechanisms of fame and the newsy cachet of name recognition, it's all about branding.
Evidently, because we all grew up watching commercial television and developing consumer habits guided by heuristics like brand loyalty, we've become slaves to trademarks and logos, which guide buying decisions when absolutely nothing else differentiates two products. Now branding is imperative on virtually anyone with anything to sell, from the largest soulless corporation to the most artistic sole proprietor.
Word of mouth might still be the best form of advertising, but it travels more slowly than logos and self-designed promotional materials.
The power of branding is such as to make actual product or performance almost irrelevant, which has opened a career strategy for the sorts who want nice titles and big paychecks, but can't actually produce anything. They can still brand.
So you see it every day, in the office and the community, where that certain player plots every move to promote his personal brand with little concern as to whether he can back it up with virtue, faith, enlightenment or even a product. Self-promotion is the essence of branding, and branding is the vehicle for self-promotion. The brand is all-important.
Not long ago, before it occurred to people to brand themselves, they stuck to branding products. But that doesn't mean people weren't used to brand products. Picking the right personality with the right attributes to go with the product always has been a staple of product branding.
In that sense, the NBA couldn't have chosen better as it designed its logo with the silhouetted player. The player silhouetted on the NBA's logo is none other than the great Jerry West.
The Los Angeles Lakers tore through this spring's NBA postseason with historic dominance, walking past the Sacramento Kings, annihilating the Portland Trail Blazers and embarrassing the San Antonio Spurs to wrap up the Western Conference in 11 consecutive wins. Then they sat around for 10 days waiting for a winner to emerge from the Eastern Conference.
When the Philadelphia 76ers finally showed up for the NBA Finals, the Lakers stumbled in the opener, which was, basically, a glorified practice to get back up to speed after a long pause. With that out of the way, the Lakers never left any doubt they'd quickly dispense with the Sixers. In five games, another championship trophy went to the Lakers, who won 15 of 16 playoff starts and lost only once after the beginning of April.
The post mortems have wandered into the familiar briars and thickets, often addressing the likelihood of a long-running Lakers dynasty. Much has been debated pertaining to the merits of Lakers coach Phil Jackson, branded as a Zen master and mind player, advocate of the triangle offense, winner of eight NBA titles and, curiously, denied his due because he coaches great players.
No one seems to notice that these great players were never more than pretty good before Jackson made them champions. That goes for Michael Jordan, who quit the game rather than play for another coach, and Shaquille O'Neal, whose considerable talents amounted to nothing more than pop stardom before Jackson took him the rest of the way.
We turn, then, to O'Neal, the Big Brand himself. At this point, he is denied deification in basketball circles only by practiced reverence toward the great centers of NBA past -- George Mikan, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. But none was so massive and powerful as O'Neal, whose game has improved in almost every phase before our very eyes. And, where once O'Neal put off basketball fans as an unfocused dilettante, today he's endorsed by Jackson as his team leader.
O'Neal became the team leader by being the good guy on his team, which could never have happened if Kobe Bryant hadn't contrasted for much of the season as the petulant bad guy. For nearly five months, as Bryant complained that the triangle offense mitigated his true greatness, basketball fandom rallied around O'Neal as the true center of the Lakers. And when Bryant finally came around and worked within the offense to trigger the Lakers' late surge, O'Neal never hung him with an "I told you so." Instead, he embraced Bryant, called him "my hero," and the Lakers couldn't be stopped.
So this burgeoning dynasty, as it's usually described, revolves around Jackson, O'Neal and Bryant. And lost in all this, no doubt with quiet satisfaction in a beautiful home in an enclave of the Hollywood hills, is the true master and creator of this constellation, the man on the logo, Jerry West himself.
Never has West's contribution to the NBA been more historic and definitive than it is today, and never has he been so far out of view. The general manager of the Lakers' "Showtime" teams, who won five NBA titles in the 1980s, West has built a new dynasty in the same city by the same formula.
It isn't just that West is the only man who could have gotten through to Bryant in a widely reported dinner conversation earlier this spring. It is, indeed, that West, now 63 and the Lakers' executive vice president of basketball operations, knows the difference between making it to the finals and winning them, and he built this team accordingly.
As a kid out of West Virginia playing in Los Angeles when the Lakers moved there from Minneapolis in 1960, West quickly drew fame as their "Mr. Outside" in tandem with Elgin Baylor, "Mr. Inside." But the Lakers couldn't win the NBA championship.
Despite guidance from West, one of the NBA's all-time great players, L.A. lost its first seven trips with him to the NBA Finals. Not until the Lakers acquired Chamberlain, a true dominating center and a real Mr. Inside, did they go the distance, and that wasn't until Chamberlain's third trip with them to the finals in 1972.
But West never forgot the formula. In 1979, the Lakers having traded for Abdul-Jabbar some years earlier, they finagled to draft Magic Johnson. Again, the Lakers had their Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside. They brought in Pat Riley to coach, West sprinkled in role players and team won three NBA titles in four years, ending in 1988.
That run ended, and the Lakers went on a painful rebuilding process. But West had to know the parts he would need -- Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside, complementary players to fill roles and a coach who could motivate. In 1996, West drafted Bryant out of high school and signed O'Neal as a free agent. In 1999, he signed Jackson. And it's showtime again.
The great Lakers teams have the same balance based on one player to dominate under the basket and another to dominate on the open floor. Other NBA teams are lopsided. The Milwaukee Bucks are three Mr. Outsides and San Antonio has two Mr. Insides, though they were a different team in the playoffs without their Mr. Outside, Derek Anderson. The Sixers have their Mr. Outside in Allen Iverson and a decent Mr. Inside in Dikembe Mutombo. But only the Lakers have the powerful balance, however delicate it might be at times.
For all he's accomplished, West has faded into the background with the Lakers, for whom Mitch Kupchak now handles the day-to-day operation. Long past the need to brand himself, West has, again, redefined the NBA product.
With the resurgence of the Lakers, they have become the much-needed standard the NBA has missed since Jordan's retirement. It's all in a life's work for the man on the logo, the commercial face of the NBA and the state of the art in building champions.
