By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — It was down time, really, a time for a few laughs and comaraderie.
The scene was the Coliseum during the first Bob Huggins’ Fantasy Basketball Camp, where a group the Over The Hill Gang paid big bucks to rub elbows with legends like Jerry West, Hot Rod Hundley and Huggs himself.
For a few days they played hard on the court, harder off, some of the tales taller than the players themselves.
The games the campers played were officiated by WVU’s active players, who are better with a ball in their hand than a whistle in their mouth, as they would prove during the breaks in the action when they’d mess around on the court.
Jonnie West was one of those players and he had taken the ball out beyond half court and and let fly.
Off to the side, giving an interview to a newspaperman, was Jerry West. As deep as he was in thought, he did not miss what his son had just done and he took a timeout from the interview.
“Jonnie,” he said, a touch of sternness in his voice, “you’re never going to take that shot in a game.”
It was his way of of … well, of being Jerry West.
Practice makes perfect and perfection is the only thing Jerry West ever accepted in himself and it was what he wanted his son, a WVU player, to strive for, fully knowing that no one ever achieves perfection.
Jonnie West let the admonition slid off his back.
He knows the way his father is and he understands what he was doing and what he wants.
“It’s good to have a father who knows basketball pretty well,” he said the other day, before the Duquesne game.
Pretty well?
The man was one of the greatest college players ever. He was one of the greatest professional players ever. He was one of the greatest general managers ever, in any sport.
He is, for goodness sake, THE LOGO!
“You get used to it growing up,” Joinnie West said of the demands his father puts on his basketball. “He does get serious, but it’s what he lived for. He made his living from basketball.”
Jonnie West is a good player, not a great one, a player who is getting his first real chance this season, being used in situations that matter.
His first two years he wasn’t really ready for big-time college basketball, playing only 92 minutes in the two years, some of which was lost to a broken foot.
“The biggest thing is he is bigger and stronger now,” Huggins would say. “He’s 195 or 200 pounds. When he came here was less than 160 pounds. He’s better equipped physically to play at this level than he was before.”
And so he is getting a chance. Five games into the season he had already played 40 minutes, had an 11-point effort against Long Beach State.
He accepts his role.
“Everyone wants to be the star,” he said, “but it doesn’t just happen. Successful teams always have players who know their role. Coach asks me to make shots.”
This is a good team with great players, that could be a great team if its good players like West can give it the quality minutes it needs.
“The first couple of years I was getting used to how basketball is played at this level,” West admitted. “I knew it would take time getting there.”
The time was not wasted, however, just as West isn’t wasting his time trying to be the second coming of his father. While he admits that people say he looks like him, he understands that his father was a once in a lifetime player who had the perfect skills and mental makeup.
That is not to say that Jonnie West cannot make a career out of basketball.
“I always wanted to be a coach,” he admitted.
Certainly he has a background to move in that direction and his time spent under Huggins can’t hurt any, but there is even more on his mind when it comes to the future.
“It would be a lot of fun to be a general manager in the NBA,” he said.
To that end his life is as dedicated as was his father’s, majoring in sports management and seeing the game from the inside out on a daily basis.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
