After decades of avoiding the topic, NBA commissioner Adam Silver has admitted what most people already knew: the iconic logo is based on a photo of Lakers star Jerry West. Jerry West was a 14-time All-Star with the Los Angeles Lakers. A statue of him outside the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles shows the basketball star in a pose similar to the one that inspired the NBA logo.
Shortly after the announcement of Jerry West’s passing, a basketball player and Hall of Fame executive, at the age of 86, the NBA sent an email to the media with a statement from commissioner Adam Silver praising West as a “basketball genius” who contributed to all aspects of the league for over 60 years. Above the statement was an image of the iconic league logo: a rectangle with rounded corners, blue on one side and red on the other, with the white silhouette of a player dribbling in the center.
Following one of the league’s strangest traditions, there was no acknowledgment that the silhouette of the man at the top of the statement was, in fact, West. It’s one of the worst-kept secrets in sports. The NBA hired Alan Siegel—the branding expert who created the Major League Baseball logo—to create a logo for the league in 1969 and based the image on a photograph of West, who was a star player for the Los Angeles Lakers at the time.
The NBA did not announce that the logo represented the player, but it was so obvious to basketball people that West ended up with a nickname that carried significant weight: he was called “the Logo.”